This dissertation is an historical and critical study of sound as spiritual power in Qawwali, the Islamic devotional music of the Chishtiyya Sufi order of South Asia. My intention is to show that music and religion are, by both implication and design, coextensive in traditional Qawwali performance. Although much effort is expended by Sufis to ensure that the sung text is primary in the performance of traditional, religious Qawwali, it is the transmission of baraka [spiritual power, or blessing] through musical sound that distinguishes Qawwali as the particular performance of expressive culture that it is. The explicit religious function of Qawwali is to act as a catalyst for ecstatic states of religious experience. In this context, the music itself is not simply a vehicle for the sung text, it is also a vehicle for the transmission of spiritual power [baraka]. According to many Chishtiyya Sufi saints [Awliya], spiritual music is identical with spiritual power, that is, it is coextensive with religious experience and communion with the divine. Using a combination of case studies from ethnographic fieldwork in Maharashtra, India, and a variety of textual sources on Sufism, in this study I contextualize the sounds of Qawwali as a cultural system of symbols in its historical setting, the South Asian dargah [Muslim tomb-shrine].
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-09262007-151811 |
| Date | 03 October 2007 |
| Creators | Newell, James Richard |
| Contributors | Beth A. Conklin, Volney P. Gay, Gregory F. Barz, Richard J. McGregor |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-09262007-151811/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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