Asian Arts Agency

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Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals

14 May - 25 May

Tour dates

Qawwali music legends Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals tour the UK this spring.

We are excited to announce that Qawwali music pioneers Rizwaan-Muazzam Qawwals are making their highly anticipated return to the UK, embarking on a national tour in May. We’re bringing this fantastic show to multiple venues across the country, so you can watch this electrifying show live.

“One of the most exhilarating improvised vocal styles on the planet.” (The Guardian)

This Qawwali group is led by the internationally acclaimed Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, who have been performing together as Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals since the 1990s. The group will showcase their new album, At the Feet of the Beloved, as well as playing the UK premiere of performances from Chain of Light, the lost Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album which was first released last year; discovered 34 years after it was recorded.

“At The Feet of The Beloved revives the traditional sound of a Qawwal party: harmonium drones, a steady pulse of handclaps rising and falling in intensity, tablas poised for firecracker explosions and voices raining down devotions both divine and secular.” (⭐⭐⭐⭐ Financial Times)

The two lead singers come from a direct family line of Qawwali music that spans over five centuries. Their grandfather was an uncle of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and taught Nusrat the art of qawwali vocal music. They have continued their uncle’s pioneering efforts to transcend cultural, language and religious barriers and to bring to the world the devotional but vibrant Qawwali vocal music of the Sufi mystics.

The band performs in traditional style – sitting on the ground rather than on seats – which they believe brings them closer to God. They sing in Farsi (Persian), Punjabi, and Urdu with an intensity that has led one commentator to call them, only half in jest, “the Qawwali Clash.” 

Their live performances are  majestic, hypnotic, exciting, and deeply joyful, and it takes classical music into totally unexpected corners. Performing songs that use hypnotic vocal repetition to induce a state of ecstasy, the brothers’ soaring voices are backed by a gharana, an ensemble of harmonium and tabla accompanied by handclaps.

“Rizwan and Muazzam’s voices climb and swoop as if riding air currents; the harmonium seeks a similar undulating flight path while fingertips flutter like hummingbirds across the tablas.” (BBC)

Their new album, At the Feet of the Beloved, is a moving collection of songs that ache with the frenzied anxiety of falling in love and dreamy desire of devotion. The album was released in March on Real World Records.

As part of their UK tour, the Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals will perform at Bradford’s City of Culture celebrations, and as the closing event of the South Asian Sounds festival at London’s Royal Festival Hall.