The Qawwali Project – An Untold Story

Dhruv Sangari (Bilal Chisty) is a leading, very popular Qawwal from the new generation of practitioners. Qawwali is learnt as a performance art, honed and perfected after years of practice. The practitioner has to be versatile and understand the spiritual context of the words sung for the desired effect on the listener. All Qawwalis are based on the Raga from the Hindustani classical music tradition. Here we see the intensity of expression as the practitioner is lost in singing ‘hamd’ in the praise of God.

The Qawwali Project, is an initiative conceptualized by Manjari Chaturvedi where the untold story of Qawwali unfolds through the eyes of photographers. The practitioners are photo-documented with their performance art, their lives and their association with the Sufi shrines where they perform. Qawwali is the performance art and Qawwal is the practitioner. This is an attempt by the Sufi Kathak Foundation to document the traditions as they exist at the shrines itself.