wo Pakistani vocalists, Zarsanga and Sain Zahoor, have been named in the Aga Khan Music Awards list his year. A grand ceremony will be held in Oman by the end of October where the winners will share a prize fund of $500,000 as well as opportunities for professional development.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is much better known in the Muslim world than the Music Award. The Music Award, a triennial event, was instituted in 2018. It recognises exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence. These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new work; contracts for recordings and artist management; support for pilot education initiatives; and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation and dissemination projects.

One is familiar with Indian and Afghan recipients of the award and can conclude that the others too must have made solid contributions to earn their place on the list. However, one is not privy to their contributions to music and the benchmark used by the Aga Khan Award Committee.

“The Aga Khan Music Awards reflect the conviction of His Highness the Aga Khan that music can serve as a cultural anchor, deepening a sense of community, identity and heritage while simultaneously reaching out in powerful ways to people of various backgrounds. In naming the laureates, the jury expressed its desire to support as many outstanding nominees as possible from the geographically and culturally diverse pool of close to 400 nominations in a time of urgent need for musicians and music educators. While contributing to the preservation and ongoing development of musical heritage, many of the laureates draw on the power of music to raise awareness about social and environmental issues,” says a press release.

The Pakistani laureates of the 2022 Aga Khan Music Awards are Zarsanga and Sain Zahoor. Zarsanga, a vocalist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is known as the Queen of Pashtun Folklore for her career-long devotion to the orally transmitted traditional music of tribal Pashtuns. She belongs to a nomadic tribe called Kutanree. The Kutan people roam the Pashtun areas of the Punjab and Sindh. Some of them travel as far as Afghanistan and stay there in summer and return to the Punjab and Sindh during the winter. Some of Zarsanga’s most famous numbers are: Da Bangriwal Pa Choli Ma Za (her first song on radio), Zma Da Khro Jamo Yara, Rasha Mama Zwi De, Zma Da Ghrono Pana Yara and Kht Me Zanzeri De.

Sain Zahoor is a Punjabi musician with a lifelong practice of singing sufi poetry at shrines and festivals. His singing is often accompanied by ecstatic dance. Recently, he collapsed while performing in Britain. However, he is better now and on the path to recovery.

Zarsanga, a vocalist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is known as the Queen of Pashtun Folklore for her career-long devotion to the orally transmitted traditional music of tribal Pashtuns. She belongs to a nomadic tribe called Kutanree. Kutan tribes people roam the Pashtun area of the Punjab and Sindh.

From India, Zakir Hussain has been nominated for a special prize for Lifetime Achievement in recognition of his highly visible model of enlightened cross-cultural musicianship that has elevated the status of the tabla both in India and around the world through countless artistic collaborations, concert tours, commissions, recordings and film scores. Dilshad Khan, tenth-generation sarangi player from a hereditary lineage in Rajasthan is expanding the language of the sarangi in film music and through innovative cross-cultural collaborative projects. Asin Khan Langa, a sarangi player, singer, composer and community activist from Rajasthan’s hereditary Langa musical community, performs sufi poetry, set to traditional and newly composed melodies.

Daud Khan Sadozai from Afghanistan is a leading exponent of the Afghan rubab for a major impact on the preservation, development and dissemination of Afghan music worldwide.

From Iran, Golshan Ensemble, a four women group that performs Iranian traditional music with a contemporary sound, has been nominated.

Seyyed Mohammad Musavi and Mahoor Institute are also from Iran. The latter is the founder and long-time director of Mahoor Institute of Culture and Arts. He is well known for his seminal contributions to the development of Iranian music and musicology. Yasamin Shah Hosseini, also from Iran is a leading young master of the ’oud who is reimagining the place of this instrument in Iranian music through her innovative compositions and improvisations.

Zulkifli and Bur’am are from Indonesia. They have been honoured for revitalising the Acehnese song traditions. Composer, improviser, vocalist and educator, Peni Candra Rini, is also from Indonesia. He has been selected for his knowledge of traditional Indonesian performing arts.

Soumik Datta has been nominated from Britain. He is a sarod player who fuses Hindustani classical music with pop, rock, electronica and film soundtracks to raise awareness about urgent social issues including climate change, refugees and mental health.

The other winners are: Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane from Mauritania, Yahya Hussein Abdallah from Tanzania and Afel Bocoum from Mali.

The Aga Khan Music Awards Master Jury also named Musallam al-Kathiry as the winner of a special award for Excellence in Service to Omani Musical Heritage. He is a music researcher, arts manager, performer and composer from Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, and has made important contributions to the collection, documentation, preservation and dissemination of Omani music.

The Master Jury that selected the winners consisted of six distinguished arts professionals from Azerbaijan, Bahrain, India, Turkey, Tunisia and the United States: HE Shaikha Hala Bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Divya Bhatia, Rachel Cooper, Yurdal Tokcan and Dhafer Youssef.

The writer is a culture critic based in Lahore.