Article The Origin and Journey of Qawwali From Sacred Ritual to Entertainment? Anuradha Bhattacharjee Shadab Alam Abstract This article deals with origin, evolution and the heritage of Sufi music. The objective of this article is to trace the journey of Sufi musical practices and traditions across the world, their forms, and how Sufi music has created a heritage and subculture across the Muslim as well as non-Muslim world carving an identity for itself as liberal or spiritual Islam rather than legal Islam. Philosophic Qur’anic verses, such as ‘Poverty is my pride’, are the bedrock of Sufism and quoted in every manual of Sufi doctrine. Such verses are limitless in their depth, scope and meaning, and the reader/listener may draw as much mystical meaning as s/he has the capacity to understand. The propagation of Sufism started from its origin in Baghdad, Iraq, and spread to Persia, Pakistan, North Africa, Central Asia and Muslim Spain. Sufism has produced a large body of poetry in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi and even Bangla, from which the genre of Sufi music, lyrics and qawwali has emerged. The Sufi poetry has integrated with the local musical culture of the various parts of the world and created a rainbow of variations down the ages. This article draws upon published literature from several languages on the origins of Sufi music, including qawwali, and collates samples of Sufi music from across the world and synthesizes the results. Keywords Sufi music, heritage, evolution, philosophic verses, cultural product, qawwali Introduction Sufi music and qawwali have been a part of the warp and weft of Oriental culture for centuries now. Sufism has a basic philosophy of propagation of universal brotherhood through love (poetry) and music. It, therefore, requires to involve the indigenous examples and patterns to become acceptable to all irrespective of community and religion. Maulana Jallaludin Rumi, with the help of Shadi Sheerazi, developed the dance form of ‘whirling dervishes’ to the beat of the daff from the sound of copper vessels used by potters of Turkey (Sufi Soul: The Mystical Music of Islam 2005). This is known as ‘sama’ and is one of the greatest cultural messages of Turkey performed all over the world after introducing the audience to the religious nature of the performance and asking them to conduct themselves appropriately during the performance. In Egypt, Sufi verses are sung adapted to local dialect accompanied with local Journal of Creative Communications 7(3) 209–225 © 2012 Mudra Institute of Communications SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC DOI: 10.1177/0973258613512439 http://crc.sagepub.com