14 May - 25 May
| 14 May 25 Book tickets |
Bradford 2025 City of Culture The Alhambra Theatre |
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|---|---|---|
| 18 May 25 Book tickets |
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre London |
Part of South Asian Sounds 2025 |
| 23 May 25 Book tickets |
Birmingham Town Hall Birmingham |
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| 25 May 25 Book tickets |
Bristol Beacon Bristol |
Qawwali music legends Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals will be touring the UK.
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.
This Qawwali group is led by the internationally acclaimed Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam. They have been performing together as Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals since the 1990s.
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.
“One of the most exhilarating improvised vocal styles on the planet.” (The Guardian)
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.”
The brothers’ live performances are regarded as being 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.
Intoxicating and entrancing, “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)
In great demand, with worldwide followers, Rizwan-Muazzam have performed at festivals and venues globally, including: Barbican in London, WOMAD Festival in the UK, Italy and Abu Dhabi, Korener Hall – Toronto, Luminat’eau Festival – Canada, Llangollen International Festival Eisteddfod, Voices Festival at the London Royal Opera House, Edinburgh Mela, Jaipur Festival – India, Grand Performances – Los Angeles and Printemps des Arts – Monte-Carlo.
Not only are they touring the UK, but Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals will also be closing the South Asian Sounds festival at Southbank Centre! Find out more here.
The group have announced, to accompany their tour, they are releasing their new album, At the Feet of the Beloved, a moving collection of songs that ache with the frenzied anxiety of falling in love and dreamy desire of devotion, on 14 March on Real World Records.