Fanna fi Allah Wiki

This is Tahir Qawwal: That Canadian who devotes his whole career to surfing the Sufis.

First thing you see about Tahir Qawwal are his doodlocks - they wind themselves around his face and produce a turban-halo effect. The 35-year-old Canadian, leader of the seven-headed Fanna Fi Allah Qavwali group, which means "annihilation in God", looks like the embodiment of swirling elegance together with his scraggly moustache and the curta in India.

At this small performance in Sydney's west, the performer looks very relaxed as he girded impassioned quawwali in his Urdu, accentuated to the west. He acknowledges that his trip to learn quawwali, the subcontinental sacred art of the Sufi mystic traditions of Islam, was unlikely. Qawwal was originally from Geoffrey Lyons, Canada and moved to India as a teen.

There he studied classic Hindi folk songs, gave up all his physical property and tried to become a Yoga student before he converted to Islam at the age of 17. "I felt the profound communication power of it as a sacred vocabulary and the teachings of the Sufis and this inspirational journey was also very magnetical to me," he says.

He then travelled to Pakistan, where he study with Rahet Fateh Ali Khan, Pashupatinath Mishra, Sher Ali Khan and Muazzam Qawwal. They took Qawwal under their wing and he spends a few months imbedding himself in the spirit and poetics of his work. Qawwal - who now resides in California - describes his charm and says that dance is transcending civilization, and even those who do not grasp poesy can sense it.

Fanna-Fi Allah - with three Canadians and Americans as well as one Pakistani - has been together for 15 years and is struggling to get over her innovative state. They have the joyful, ferocious excitement that represents the passions and poesy of the quawwali family. As Qawwal says, the lively noise reflects the kind of warm welcome he received during his time in Pakistan.

Hopefully, however, it shows a different side of Pakistan' s cultural and Muslim intellectuality, often associated with extremeism and force in the West. Qawwal, a Westernman living in Pakistan, declares that the group was "overwhelmed by the generous nature of the locals" after having performed throughout the entire nation for years. Fanna-Fi Allah will travel Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and South Africa with Mehfil-e-saga.