CONTRABANDA
10 BTExM (Best Tunes Ever x Me)
#6 - (Manqabat) Sultanul Arafin Haq Bahu (various artists)
CONTRABANDA
10 BTExM (Best Tunes Ever x Me)
#6 - (Manqabat) Sultanul Arafin Haq Bahu (various performers)
My very modest 'assemblage' today includes an obscure child prodigy born on an uncertain year of the 17th century in Qalai Shorkot, on the banks of the Chenab River, 300 km from Lahore, Pakistan: the future 'sultan' Bahu.
And, indeed, reincarnation.
And qawaali, which is a blend of classical and popular music of Indian, Persian, Arabic and Turkish origin.
And another holy man, who is said to have invented tablas and qawaali, Amir Khusrau Dehlavi (also spelled Khusro) of the Chishti Sufi order.
Also the theory of altered states of sensory perception comes into play, because of that process of estrangement that drives Sufis to play for hours (in Mohammedan exhortation, or dhikr) rather than enter into the ecstasy (fana) that absorbs you in spiritual space: even a moment of it seems to be worth a lifetime.
The life of the (“perfect saint” of the Sufis) Hazrat Sultanul Arafin Haq Bahu Rematullah is shrouded in legend. Before he was even born, they say his mother had already realized that her son would become a saint. Seeing him, the Hindu infidels apparently began to recite the beginning of the Muslim creed, the Kalima Tayyiba (“Laa Ilaha Illallah Muhammad ur-Rasulullah.”)
But in the 124 books that Bahu wrote, he insisted on two principles, even before faith in the Shariah: obscurity and desistance. And he said: “let me be clear: truth leads to redemption, falsehood to destruction,” preaching a Sufism that prized the power of the immaterial, of that thought that made him fall into ecstasy.
Qawaali is my favorite style of music. The name means “sound” (and “affirmation”, meaning “of Mohammed”) and the resonances are atavistic: it is lost in the mists of time together with the history of the Sufis, which only recently intertwines with Muslims, perhaps (it is my theory) because the Sufi purity of the Spirit had already been lost to Christians, from Constantine onwards. [However, it is known that St. Francis was in Egypt and there are those who want him to be a Sufi.]
The Sufis are already in themselves an apparently extemporaneous assemblage: a sect that is not a sect; without a holy city; without temporal organization; without religious dogmas; without a history. And perhaps, as in the case of Bahu, without a fixed abode for life.
In their petty crusade for secularisation, Bollywood-Mumbai has bastardized qawaali and transformed it into a local X Factor phenomenon. Hollywood (Holy-Wood: the magic stick conquering our imagination) had already done it with Oliver Stone, who used Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (the most famous qawaal of the late 20th century and a religious icon) for scenes of decapitations in the prison of “Natural Born Killers”.
Here reincarnation comes into play, because instead of severed heads, in this ecstatic music, I lose myself and feel a contact with the deepest nature of my being. Perhaps it's about the melodic improvisations, swirling in the air.
Certainly it's about those quarter tones make you feel as if you just left the South of the Italian South and started sailing the Mare Nostrum to the Maghreb or the Middle East. A trip through the Mediterranean Sea which carries with it an aural metamorphosis: octaves from twelve notes in Italy, in Lebanon they grow to twenty-two.
Qawaals are not living monuments of vocal technique, but rather - in the best examples - great popular improvisers who express in fifteen or twenty minutes (or an hour) their relationship with the essence of the Universe. It is known that Nusrat voice could easily turn men to tears.
Rather than technique, qawaals weave a magical assemblage which produces altered states of perception, fueled by the supporting chorus, who accompany the singer in hypnotic repetitions. The harmonium is part of the line-up, a relic of Western colonization able to use only 12 “well-tempered” notes.
All performers show a simplicity that would have pleased Pier Paolo Pasolini: chosen people, in search of transcendence, through reiteration.
This manqabat - a saint's praise; in this case Bahu, Anglised in Bahoo - is what some evergreen like Autumn Leaves is for a jazz musicians: you can find it sung by many artists. Listen to Badar Miandad Khan, or his relative Nusrat Fateh (a bit amphetamine-like in singing the Sultan Bahu: Azir Mian's qawaal-punk is rather better.) And Arf Feroz, or Mohammed Ikbal, or Irfan Hadrian, or Faiuddin Soharwardi.
I already wrote about my favorite version in 2014: it's slow and by Abida Parveen, who called it Ho Ji Maula.
The text, a Sufi allegory of the sacred and the profane, tells that “my love shines like a star. Day or night, its brilliance pervades everything. (…) Every pore of my body has a thousand tongues professing their love speaking the language of the Mute.” And in fact there is no need for words - the melody is enough to give an unknown joy. Especially in these times.
Published for Contrabanda, BlowUp Magazine
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