Lok Virsa to pay tribute to Aziz Mian Qawwal on Friday

Islamabad :Lok Virsa will arrange a ‘Mehfil-e-Samaa- - tribute to Aziz Mian Qawwal’ featuring a special performance by Imran Aziz Mian on September 15, at its Open Air Theatre.

Qawwali is a form of Sufi devotional music originated in South Asia. It is popular in the Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan and is part of a musical tradition that stretches back for more than 700years.

Great Sufi saint, Amir Khusro is credited with fusing the Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Indian musical traditions in the late13th century to create Qawwali as we know it today. In South Asia, the formal name used for a session of Qawwali is ‘Mehfil-e-Samaa’ that has its origins in the word ‘Samaa’ originally used in Central Asia and Turkey to refer to musicals forms that were very similar to the present era's Qawwali.

Originally performed at Sufi shrines or ‘dargahs’ throughout South Asia, Qawwali gained mainstream popularity amongst the local and international audiences in late 20th century through the work of legendary Pakistani singers including Aziz Mian Qawwal, Nusrat FatehAli Khan and Sabri Brothers.

Aziz Mian Qawwal is one of Pakistan's leading traditional Qawwals, also famous for singing ‘ghazals’ in his own unique style of Qawwali.

To this day, Aziz Mian remains one of the most popular Qawwals of South Asia, having given us many Qawwali hits. He holds the record for singing the longest commercially released Qawwali, ‘Hashr Ke Roz Yeh Poochhunga’, which runs slightly over 115 minutes.
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