The Royal Opera House’s Voices Across the World series of concerts featuring great vocalists from Hungary, Egypt, Iraq and beyond opened on Friday with soulful Sufi music from Pakistan. Since the international success of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, this thrilling fusion of Islamic devotional music and poetry has become rather popular.

The two lead singers of Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali are nephews of Nusrat and lead a 10-strong group on backing vocals, harmoniums, tablas and cracking hand-claps. They opened, as Nusrat often did, with Allah Hoo which, due to its very hummable tune, has almost become a qawwali anthem. The full-throated vocals give the music the unstoppable power of waves breaking on the shore and then a solo voice takes off to ride the sound waves like a surfer. The singer’s hands sculpt the air as his curving vocal line soars over the hand-claps and repeated chords in a powerful tornado of sound.  

As probably only half the audience in the Linbury Theatre was of Asian background, it would have been useful if Rizwan-Muazzam could have introduced the songs a little more fully but there was a standing ovation at the end.
While it’s music to be heard most evocatively at a Sufi shrine, it works superbly well in a concert setting — just like going to see Bach’s B Minot Mass for musical rather than religious reasons.