Ameer Khusro, a great poet of Hindi, Urdu and Farsi (Persian) of the 12th century India. He is credited with invention of sitar, and qawwali and tarana forms of singing. He was disciple of Khwaja Nizamuddin and wrote beautiful sufi poems. I have two of his poems sung in the qawwali form. The first is in praise of Allah written in Farsi and the other describes scene of Holi, a Hindu festival. The first one has been sung by many great exponents of qawwali, including Nusrat Fateh Ali in his inimitable intricate style with great vocal fireworks. This interpretation is different, possibly keeping in mind the kind of simple melodies which may have been in vogue at that time. The use of tarana bol at the end of the qawwali makes it worth numerous repeat listenings. In the second qawwali you will notice the manner in which the qawwali rises to a crescendo before coming to an end.
These are sung by Shankar Shambhu Qawwals, two qawwal brothers who never sang any shallow qawwali as far as I know and maintained very high standards unlike several other qawwals of their generation who were otherwise very good but played to the gallery.
Murli Manohar Swaroop, who had a deep knowledge of music and knew how to put it to use composed music for these songs.
freshlemonsandpolice has corrected me about the description of the second part (see comments). I thank him.
20 авг 2024
