The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167996 Message #4057337
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
04-Jun-20 - 10:43 PM
Thread Name: Indian Gypsy singing
Subject: RE: Indian Gypsy singing
Jack, My very speculative guess would be that most people are not used to seeing female qawwals -- which is accurate because there *are* very few. They are, however, used to seeing qawwali performed by males in the archetype of the world famous figure of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. At the same time, while they may know male flamenco singers, MAYBE the most salient global image of a Spanish flamenco singer is female (?). Also, the dress/grooming/ sartorial presentation of the lead Nooran Sister in this clip (though not in all their clips) is a bit more, I dunno, "tousled" somehow... a bit less typical than the stereotypically Puritanical visual presentation of a lot of women Indian singers on stage. This may give them a more "free spirited gypsy" look. Anyway, this is just all fun speculation :)
The performance contains a medley of stuff. I don't know the Sufi poets (e.g. Bulleh Shah, Ghulam Farid) well enough to give author to all the poetry. But they are devotional lyrics.
One twist I noticed is that towards the end (35:44) they sing "Main Teri tu Mera" by the 1950s (starting era) Punjabi "folk" singer and recording artist, Lal Chand Yamla Jatt. (Lal Chand can be considered a "folk" singer much like many to receive that label in the English speaking world at the same time, who created music with a "folk" aesthetic yet were creating new compositions and being stage performance artists.) The twist here is that Lal Chand's song is not Sufi at all in the literal sense. It appears as a secular love song. However, Sufi poetry so often takes the form of love songs that are meant to be interpreted on two levels, the second (perhaps "true") level is that of a devotee's love of the Divine. Almost always, the subject voice is female (regardless of the gender of the singer) and addresses a male lover (metaphorically, the husband, the Lord = God). So in this context, Lal Chand's song (which is an absolute classic of modern Punjabi music) is being re-contextualized as a Sufi sentiment.
With apologies to all if my notes come off at all as patronizing to some readers. I offer them this way on the assumption that some readers of this thread may not know about this stuff, while acknowledging that others already do know it well.