Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
qawwali

I had not known the word qavvālī والي before(link) 'singing and playing (esp. for dancing dervishes)'. No doubt of Arabic origin as so much of the Persian vocabulary of Urdu. I looked it up in a most handy online Arabic etymological lexicon (link) 'qawwal : story-teller [qala] Hin kavval, Per qawwal borrowed from Ar.' Arabic qala 'say' from Proto-Semitic *KWL, cf. Hebrerw qol 'voice'. The Wikipedia article on qawwali (link) tracks the Semantic shift from Arabic قَوْل (qaul) 'utterance (of the Prophet)' to "Qawwāl is someone who often repeats (sings) a Qaul, Qawwāli is what a Qawwāl sings." My Pakistani friend Ferhiz has on more than one occasion enthused to me about Urdu language poetry. The Farsi word seems to be قوالی (ghavvalee, link) 'a minstrel, a singer'. I am reminded of the singer of tales, Homer. There was a time when poetry, song, and tales were all one. The entry on the nastaʿlīq script link was interesting also. (Some day I must learn Arabic and Perso-Arabic script systems.)


That was very interesting. I would only add that I am not a follower of Sufic Islam and the qawwalis I like come from films and are different from the devotional qawwalis.

Last edited by latishya; 10/27/2009 12:02 AM.