Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context and Meaning in Qawwali

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi is an ethnomusicologist, and this academic book, published by Cambridge University Press, studies qawwali, the devotional Sufi music of the Indian subcontinent, through direct fieldwork with performers and audiences at actual Sufi shrine gatherings. Its strength is combining musicological analysis of the music itself with ethnographic attention to the social and ritual context in which it is performed, showing how the music functions within Sufi devotional practice rather than treating it as a standalone art form. Its limit is that it documents specific performance traditions and communities Qureshi studied in a particular period and region, and Sufi musical practice varies across different orders and regions of the subcontinent, so its findings should not be generalized to all Sufi musical practice without qualification.