a night of religious music

on march 8th i had a meeting with my mosaic partner pat domaratz and my friend sarita arden, at java joe’s, rochester’s farmers market. i had never been there before and loved the ambience. there weren’t that many people at 11am but i loved the art and the sunflower-yellow paint on the walls, and their crepes were great, especially the homemade cheese sauce.

in the evening we went to an event organized by the center for interfaith studies and dialogue (CISD) at nazareth college. it was a night of sacred music – an energetic performance by cantor sam asher of temple beth david, the islamic call to prayer performed by imam ishak kizilaslan, supplications by youness tihm and his group, a qawwali (sufi music) performed by the pakistani american society of rochester, afro-american spirituals performed by the mt baptist church, performances by the downtown presbyterian church, hindu invocations by the hindu temple of rochester and finally buddhist chants. i filmed bits and pieces of the entire show for the documentary, especially the qawwali in which my husband and many of our muslim interviewees were taking part. thom came along and shot with a different camera. it was 9.30pm by the time we left. my husband and i hadn’t had dinner and it was way past our kids’ bedtime but all in all the CISD is doing a great job in bringing people of different faiths together by highlighting the common thread that runs through all religions – music inspired by god.

a quick aside on qawwali (devotional sufi music from pakistan and india) – check out a brief intro on wikipedia. i find qawwali absolutely fascinating. not only is the poetry exquisite in its simplicity and emotive earnestness but the music is equally entrancing. there is a slow but steady build-up to a crescendo as the qawwal (the qawwali singer) lets go more and more of the rhythmic understructure of the song and paints with increased intensity on this musical canvas. such variations soon turn to repetition until the words start to blur and lose their meaning. the goal is to achieve a state of ecstatic rapture, an altered state of consciousness, a union with the divine. nusrat fateh ali was a great qawwal. he collaborated with peter gabriel and eddy vedder (of pearl jam) to bring qawwali to the west. some purists hold that against him but truth be told, whether it was traditional qawwali or some creative fusion between different genres, fateh ali was a musical genius with immense range. he died tragically in 1997 at the age of 49. listen to nusrat fateh ali’s rendition of “allah hu”.