Week 8
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The qawwali is a Sufi musical form common in South Asia which praises God. According to Carl W. Ernst in The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, music and particularly the human voice are used to bring out powerful emotions in praise of God in the Sufi tradition (180). The qawwali is known to have brought listeners into ecstasy, such as Qutb al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki, who was in ecstasy for three days and died when the singer stopped mid-verse (186-187). It is apparent that qawwali is a musical form which can inspire emotional ecstasy in the devout who listen to it.
We chose to choreograph a short dance to this clip from the qawwali “Allah Hoo” by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This song has a lively beat which was enjoyable to listen to and inspired dancing. Ernst describes Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as “a Pakistani singer trained in Chisti qawwali ritual” who “records in the world music genre and collaborates with American musicians on movie sound tracks” (180). He notes that qawwali is a form of music which became popular internationally because of its enjoyable rhythm, even among audiences who cannot understand the words. The line used in this clip, “jab na thaa kuch yahaan, thaa magar tuu hi tuu,” translates to “at that time there was nothing except you.” This refers to a time before the world existed and there was only God, so the song is about total and utter devotion to God. For me personally, the repetitive nature of the lyrics for this portion of the song (repetition of “Allah Hoo”) helped me to really experience it as a chant of praise, even before looking up the lyrics.
In our dance, we attempted to convey the spirit of the song through our South Asian choreography. We begin by bringing our hands up to the sky and back down to the ground to represent the relationship between humans on Earth and Allah in the heavens. We spin with our scarves in a fashion similar to that of the “whirling dervishes” who lose themselves in ecstatic prayer while listening to music. We raise our arms with simple and elegant wrist motions to demonstrate a call to Allah to grant us his beautiful presence. We took advantage of the rhythm to do very enthusiastic steps, demonstrating how the music filled us with energy. Towards the end, the three of us spin together to demonstrate the way Muslims around the world come together in praise of Allah. We appreciated that we could take a Western approach to interpreting the song and still capture an important aspect of qawwali as a form of prayer, which is the energy of the rhythm. Through this dance, we attempted to demonstrate a close connection to the music and an understanding of its meaning as a loving and ecstatic communication with God.
Link to complete song: http://nusrat.info/allah-hoo-allah-hoo/