I was recently interviewed on NPR about Riyaaz Qawwali, a group out of Austin, TX.
Hussein Rashid, a professor of religion at Hofstra University, says that many qawwaliartists working in South Asia today have limited themselves. He believes this American group is bringing the music back to its roots.
“You know, I think there’s been so much concern about what is Islam, and what isn’t, politically speaking and artistically speaking,” Rashid says, “that there’s been a push in modern qawwali to actually sanitize it and make it very sterile — and almost rule-bound — rather than ecstatic and devotional. For me, I think what Riyaaz Qawwali is doing is trying to go back to that very exciting, innovative space that qawwali was.”
And so to Rashid, it’s totally logical that such a burst of inspiration would come from deep in the heart of Texas. “In fact,” he says, “it seems natural that we would get a new flourishing of Muslim devotionals in a place like America, where we do have this freedom of religion.”
I previously wrote about the group of OnBeing, in a piece called Qawwalis, Found Sounds, and Benghazi: Locating the Sacred in a New York Church.