Qawwali is the musical expression of Sufi poetry, and is central to the samā͑ ‘listening; spiritual concert
’ of the Sufis of South Asia. The term qawwālī comes from the Arabic qaul ‘to speak or say
’. The
etymology of
the word thus carries an emphasis on the words or text of a song. The term qawwāl ‘fluent, eloquent
’ came to be applied to singers, as in the celebrated eleventh-century Persian treatise on Sufism, Kashf al-Mahjub. Today, the term Qawwāl...
