Source: Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi, 30 May 2019 — “Qawwali Night with Hamza Akram” — https://www.artscouncil.org.pk/qawwali-night-with-hamza-akram/
In May 2019, the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi gave its stage to a young qawwal it clearly saw as the future of the form. The occasion was a Qawwali Night with Hamza Akram, held at the Arts Council on 29 May 2019, and the Council’s own report of the evening reads as both a concert notice and a statement of intent: this ancient music, it argued, would live on through young artists.
That framing came from the top. Arts Council President Muhammad Ahmed Shah told the gathering that qawwali — one of the most ancient and sacred forms of music — was being promoted through a new generation of performers, and Hamza Akram was presented as exactly that kind of artist. The report describes him as a young, supremely talented qawwal, composer and singer, someone whose roots lie deep in music. His father, it notes, is a senior member of the Farid Ayaz Qawwal party, so Hamza grew up inside the tradition he now performs, rather than discovering it from outside.
What made the evening notable was not only the lineage but the sound. Hamza was introduced as an emerging artist whose latest musical offering brings the traditional qawwali kalam together with modern instrumentation — the old words, carried by a contemporary arrangement. It is the same balance that has defined his work since: respect for the devotional poetry at the heart of qawwali, and a willingness to let that poetry meet the instruments and audiences of today.
The Arts Council’s own account is short, and it is followed on the page by five photographs from the night — a reminder that this was a live, crowded, Karachi evening, not a studio exercise. For the archive, it matters because it captures Hamza at an early point in his public career, already being presented by one of Pakistan’s leading cultural institutions as a carrier of the tradition.
Seven years on, with the brothers now touring internationally, that 2019 night reads as an early chapter: a young qawwal, introduced to a Karachi audience by the Arts Council, beginning to make the case — in performance, not in words — that qawwali’s future would be sung by its youngest voices.
This post is a rephrased summary of the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi’s report, 30 May 2019. Read the original at the link above.
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