Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali Group – Upcoming Concerts

The Rizwan-Muazzam group is a Qawwali group, led by the internationally acclaimed Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam. The sons of Mujahid Mubarak Ali Khan, they have been performing together as Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals since the 1990s.

The two lead singers come from a direct family line of Qawwali music that spans over five centuries. Their grandfather was an uncle of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and taught Nusrat the art of qawwali vocal music. They themselves studied under their father, who died in 1996, and were then tutored by Nusrat. They have continued their uncle’s pioneering efforts to transcend cultural, language and religious barriers and to bring to the world the devotional but vibrant Qawwali vocal music of the Sufi mystics.

Drawing upon a rich vein of Islamic and Sufi poetry, Qawwali music is a centuries-old form of Sufi devotional music from the Indian subcontinent in which romantic love is a metaphor for spiritual adoration and mystical enlightenment. It is not surprising that Qawwali has become a staple of Bollywood film scores and an increasingly central focus of world music programmes in concert halls and festivals throughout the world.