Source: Robert Browning Associates, 11 April 2025 — “Hamza Akram Qawwal & Brothers: Sufi Songs of Pakistan” (2024–25 season listing) — https://www.robertbrowningassociates.com/24-25-season.html
Presented by Robert Browning Associates, Lotus Music & Dance and Roulette, Hamza Akram Qawwal & Brothers returned to Roulette in New York on Friday 11 April 2025 at 8 p.m. with “Sufi Songs of Pakistan”.
The listing notes that the brothers — grandsons of the revered Munshi Raziuddin — were returning to Roulette after their performances in 2019 and March 2024, a record that makes the venue something of a second home for the ensemble in America. They have been acclaimed for their riveting interpretations of qawwali, the ecstatic improvisational Sufi vocal tradition made famous in the West by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
The ensemble represents the 26th generation of the seven-centuries-old Qawwal Bachon ka Gharana of Delhi, founded by Saamat bin Ibrahim, the first qawwal of the subcontinent and principal student of the mystic Amir Khusrau. That lineage is the programme itself: songs that move between 13th-century Persian poetry and more recent Punjabi verse, carried by voices, harmonium, tabla and the rhythmic handclapping that makes a qawwali performance a conversation between the stage and the room.
Each New York return has deepened the connection. The 2025 concert came a year after the March 2024 performance and a year before the April 2026 return — a steady rhythm of visits that has made Roulette one of the most important stages in the brothers’ international touring life, and a place where American audiences now come to hear qawwali at its most traditional.
This post is a rephrased summary of the Robert Browning Associates 2024–25 season listing, shared here for our press archive. Read the original at the link above.
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