On a recent trip to India, we participated in a Qawwali performance at a mosque in Fatehpur Sikri. We were there to study Islamic Art and Architecture, but participated in the performance to experience some of the local culture as well. Our intervention with the Qawwali was one that was entirely from a tourist lens; there was no nuance to it, no context given about the history of the qawwali, just a bystander spectatorship. In some ways, this was extremely valuable, as it allowed me to form my own raw musings on the performance. I found myself having multiple contradicting thoughts and feelings about what I was witnessing. On one hand, I thought it was incredibly beautiful, and unlike anything I had ever seen. Growing up, my experiences at mosques had been entirely different. There was never any performance or music played at the mosques I went to; it was strictly about prayer and the sermons. I thought about how different of an experience it would have been had there been an element of performance and music in the atmosphere. At the same time however, because of the context that I was raised in, it felt incredibly foreign to me. I had a hard time repressing a troubling notion: this is not “true” Islam. But I think that through the teachings of this course, I was able to realize that it was not a question of truthfulness, validity, authenticity, but rather of experience. It’s not that this was not “true” Islam, as it very much was true to those performers and those (locals) participating in the Qawwali, but rather it was not the Islam that I knew and was familiar with.

The feedback from the class, as usual, complicated my conclusion on it’s validity. One comment in particular (Khalifa’s), proved especially interesting and challenging. He called into question the motivations or intentions of the performers, as they accept money for this religious practice. There are so many layers to this that tie in with many of the conversations we’ve had in class regarding such issues, such as commercialization, authenticity, the notion of “selling out”, etc. I replied that I merely could not speak on their behalf as to what their intentions are. However, I think if we had the time to do, we could have complicated the issue even further and challenged many different components of both the performance, as well as our own preconceived notions on such matters. I think overall, however, the Qawwali serves as a microcosm or case-study for many of the issues regarding Muslim Popular culture more so than I had even originally thought, and that is thanks to the insightful comments of my classmates.