The innovations that the meastro of qawaali music, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, had incorporated western rhythms and instruments into soulful qawaali music. If popular music can be the medium that attracts those hard-to-please, like my daughter, to literary heritage, we should welcome more of it. Consequently, the western audience with no knowledge of Urdu or Punjabi lapped up the largely qawaali music from the Indian subcontinent. This happened to qawaali, the traditional Sufi devotional songs, in the 1980s. If popular music can be the medium that can attract to our literary heritage those who are unaccustomed to it, or are hard-to-please on that front, we should welcome more such music.

Source: The Hindu June 27, 2016 19:07 UTC