Qawwali and Rababi: South Asia’s Migrant Music

“Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states! How many clouds float past them with impunity; how much desert sand shifts from one land to another,” the Polish poet Wisława Szymborska once wrote. And it is not only nature that disobeys political borders; so does music. 

The late Bhai Ghulam Muhammad Chand, hence Bhai Chand, was born near Amritsar in British India in 1927. In 1947, the year of the Partition of British India into the two independent states of India and Pakistan, his family moved to Lahore. From then on, Bhai Chand lived in Pakistan and it was only in 2005 that he was able to visit India again. This was despite the fact that Bhai Chand, although born into a Muslim family, sang the traditional devotional songs of the Sikhs – a religious community that is hardly present in today’s Pakistan. During the Partition, most of the Sikhs who happened to live on territories given to Pakistan chose to leave for India (or were forced to do so due to violence).

In the case of brothers Abu Muhammad and Fareed Ayaz al-Hussaini, the journey their family took was also not that uncommon. Although they were born into a Muslim family, their parents did not decide to migrate to Pakistan during the Partition (most Indian Muslims did not decide to do so, in fact). The two musically talented brothers, who went on become famous artists in Pakistan, were thus born as Indians. It was only in 1956, nine years after Partition and when the boys were barely a few years old, that their family moved to Pakistan.

What the al-Hussaini brothers and Bhai Chand have in common is that they inherited their respective musical traditions from their fathers, and that in both cases this heritage was a part of a much longer lineage that span hundreds of years. But what is more significant is that both of these lineages cannot be reduced to represent one religion – just like the artists crossed the borders of states, their music traversed the boundaries of religious traditions: between Sikhism, Hinduism, and Islam.

In the case of Bhai Chand, the musical tradition which he became the bearer of harks back to the beginnings of the Sikh religion in the 16th century. Guru Nanak, the first guru of the Sikhs, had a Muslim, Bhai Mardana, as a dear companion and a favorite musician. This story was later partially overshadowed by the long history of Sikh-Muslim conflict, especially the persecution of the Sikh community by some Muslim rulers (no wonder that the Sikhs of today tend to be socially much closer to Hindus than to Muslims). And yet Bhai Mardana was an originator of a particular genre of Sikh devotional music: the Rababi. Since Mardana, this genre continued to be traditionally performed by Muslim artists for the sake of Sikh communities, and this heritage has held across ages.

Rababi thus becomes one more testimony to South Asia’s bewilderingly fluid and open traditions – imagine a genre of Muslim devotional music being performed only by Christians in the Middle East, or a genre of Christian devotional music being performed only by Muslims somewhere in Europe. In the case of Bhai Chand, the fluid nature of this tradition even put his own religious identity at the boundary of faiths. When he was finally able to travel to India, at 78 years old, he learned that the authorities of the main Sikh temple, the Harmandir Sahib, would not allow him to perform there, not recognizing him as a Sikh (Bhai Chand, while born into a Muslim family, apparently considered himself a Sikh). The ban occurred despite the fact that his father and uncle had performed at the same place decades earlier, but that was before the Partition.

The path taken by the family of the al-Hussaini brothers, in turn, underlined their religious identity in a much clearer way. The musical genre they are known for, Qawwali, is a form of Muslim devotional music. Some of their best-known works, such their rendering of poems “Shikwa” and “Jawab-e-Shikwa,” are also a very clear statement of Muslim identity. But while the beliefs popularized by Qawwali are undoubtedly derived from the mystical strand of Islam, Sufism, the musical basis of this genre is mostly built from the bricks provided by the earlier, pre-Islamic traditions of India. Besides this, the al-Hussaini brothers are also known to perform other types of music, such as Dhrupad, one of the classical musical genres of India, which had undoubtedly started to develop before Islam became one of the dominant forces of medieval South Asia. India clad the spirit of Qawwali in a body of instrumental music – in its beginning, this genre was vocal-based only, in accordance with Islamic orthodoxy. 

And yet it would be naïve to simply state that music crosses the borders between states completely freely, like gusts of wind. Would have Bhai Chand been better off had his family stayed in India in 1947? Probably. The musician lived as a pauper most of his life; it was an Indian citizen who discovered him and brought his work to the world in 2005. It was only then that invitations and awards from across the border were showered upon him, a chain of honors that included being asked to pay a visit to the residence of the Indian prime minister (who at that that time was Manmohan Singh, a Sikh who had been born in a territory that now belongs to Pakistan).

The family of the al-Hussaini brothers, in turn, not only followed other Muslims to Pakistan but this migrating group also included more artists. The families of some of Pakistan’s most recognized Qawwali musicians of later decades, such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Sabri brothers, or Naseeruddin Saami, also belonged to this wave of migrants. The embers of the Qawwali tradition are still being kept warm in India, as are those of the Rababi tradition. But there is no doubt that this genre achieved greater popularity in independent Pakistan than independent India. Would the al-Hussaini brothers have made the same career in India had their family decided not to leave the country? It is hard to tell, but perhaps not to the same degree. To be sure, Qawwali is not part of the musical mainstream, even in Pakistan. But it is there that the talent of Nusrat Fateh Ali thrived; it is there that the genre was promoted by Radio Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s; it is there that it is being popularized in a more commercial form by Coke Studio today. This was undoubtedly connected to the country’s emphasis on its religious identity.

Wisława Szymborska was right that clouds may float past the borders with impunity and that much desert sand may shift between borders freely. And yet, modern states are capable of manipulating nature as well, forcing it to respect their boundaries to some extent – for instance, by damming rivers. And so it is with music, which is, after all, a creation of the people – individuals whom the states can fund or ignore, invite or expel. The fluid and cross-cultural nature of musical genres, such as Qawwali or Rababi, is not everlasting and should not be taken for granted. A musical tradition may be claimed and taken over by a community that will make sure that a part of its roots, the part that had come from other religious traditions, will be carefully covered and forgotten. A detailed preservation of history of such genres as Qawwali and the state patronage over such artists like late Bhai Chand are some of the ways of not letting this happen.