Gulam sabri brothers qawwali6/15/2023 ![]() They employ a traditional mix of harmonium, tabla, dholak, hand claps, and chorus–although a few album cuts show Western influence via saxophone and electric bass–and with a mix of inventive melodies and dizzying vocal call-and-response they attain a trancelike state without hyperbole. ![]() Rather than driving the music consistently upward as Ali Khan does, the Sabris concentrate on thickening and intensifying the middle ground. On the group’s latest recording, Ya Mustapha (Xenophile/Green Linnet), it avoids most of the vocal acrobatics–the improvisational staccato bursts and the high-pitched soaring–of Ali Khan, but it still has power to spare. ![]() When longtime lead singer Haji Ghulam Farid Sabri died in 1994, his younger brother Maqbool Ahmed Sabri masterfully assumed leadership of the ten-man group–before Haji’s death the two engaged in some truly sublime vocal sparring. The Sabris, whose lineage runs back 400 years to Punjabi court musicians, made their first recording in 1958, and in their homeland they have a larger following than Ali Khan. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has popularized qawwali, the ecstatic devotional music of the Sufis, but fellow Pakistanis the Sabri Brothers were actually the first performers to take it outside their native land. Get your UnGala tickets: A museum takeover and art party celebrating the Reader's 50ish anniversary Close
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