October 12, 2017 | UHCL Staff
At the core of Riyaaz Qawwali’s musical performances is interfaith awareness and a celebration of the diversity in South Asia. The seven-man ensemble will share its particular brand of centuries-old spiritual, devotional music to a new audience for their first performance at University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Bayou Theater Friday, Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Sonny, the Houston-based ensemble’s artistic director and lead singer, said that the ensemble represents many ethnicities and religions. “We are Indians, Pakistani, and Bengali, and we’re Hindu, Muslim, agnostic and atheist,” Sonny said. “We’re all immigrants, but now we’re all American. We primarily sing about love and higher levels of spirituality. Lyrically and musically, our music is similar to Christian gospel music.”
Riyaaz Qawwali began 11 years ago at University of Texas at Austin, and unlike other musical groups that originate in college and dissolve after the members graduate, Sonny said that this group simply continued, attributing their success among university audiences to the fact that the core message of the lyrics is to remain connected to a higher power. “It’s not a two-hour singing concert,” he said. “We are translating a culture embodied in Qawwali. We talk about it in between songs, and help people make relevant connections to age-old song lyrics.”
He said that the most exciting thing about performing is the opportunity to translate the core meaning of the music. “We sing about love and a higher power, and connecting with everyone — not just brown-skinned audience members” he explained. “Our songs are over 400 years old and we talk about their relevance to today’s audience. Imagine taking a poetic theme like love and talking about it from different perspectives. If we’re talking about love, we explore new love, a return to love, loss of love. Translating these elements can be truly profound and it’s unique to this genre of music.”
Sonny believes that a Riyaaz Qawwali concert is a musical, cultural and anthropological experience. “It’s not what people expect,” he said. “The take-away is that the audience members find many similarities to this culture, a culture they thought at the begging of the concert was so foreign. Getting to the intellectual core of this genre can be very moving.”
That’s because Qawwali’s themes are not specific to South Asia or any particular geographic or cultural region, he said. “When we bring these Eastern themes translated to English, what results is a sense of universality. We are all connected. People realize none of this is really foreign after all.”
To purchase tickets for Riyaaz Qawwali, visit www.uhcl.edu/bayou-theater/events-tickets.
