Customer Reviews

Sufi Music From Sindhi Pakistan

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This collection of Indus River Music via the Sufi tradition of Sindh ranges from the passionately serious to the soulfully fun: production quality is superb, documentation complete and artful. Should be satisfying to any admirer of Indian/Middle Eastern music....

Recorded in Berlin in 1992, these pieces, based on raga modes, are performed on numerous unusual but traditional folk instruments of southern Pakistan: a surando, which is sarangi-like fiddle; an ektara, which resembles a long-necked erhu and serves as a drone; a danbura, which is a pair-shaped, saz-like lute; an alghoza double reed, which plays both melody and drone; a benu, being a bamboo flute; harmonium; and finally a dholak two-faced drum. Accompanied by singers, the timbre rests in the treble range, and the engineering does not help by its distant flatness, though the sound is very clear. With dances, tales, a wedding song, and instrumentals, this German prize-winning album does present the Sufi spirit from a area poorly represented among available recordings. If you know only of Qawwali Pakistani Sufi music and its bright, rhythmic songs of harmonium, voice, and clapping, you will appreciate this 73-minute long album and its different instruments and feeling.