Source: Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities, 5 March 2022 — “The Spring of Culture Festival 2022 Scheduled Events in Celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Bahraini-Pakistani Diplomatic Relations” — https://www.culture.gov.bh/en/mediacenter/news_center/2022/March2022/Name,20455,en.html
On 4 and 5 March 2022, the Cultural Hall in Bahrain hosted a “Night of Qawwali” by Hamza Akram Qawwal and his brothers, as part of the 16th Spring of Culture Festival — and as part of a celebration with a meaning beyond music.
The festival was marking the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Bahrain and Pakistan, organised by the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities in cooperation with the Pakistani Embassy. The brothers’ two evenings on the stage of the Cultural Hall were the musical centrepiece of that golden jubilee celebration.
The “Night of Qawwali” revisited and revived a form of Sufi music, presented through tunes that mixed literature, music and high, elaborate performance — qawwali melodies blending lyric with literature, beginning with the recitation of poems by great poets such as Amir Khusrau, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and passing through poems by poets of later ages, carried by the voices of Hamza Akram Qawwal and his brothers.
The Spring of Culture Festival, organised with the Shaikh Ibrahim Center for Culture and Research, Al Dana Amphitheatre, Al Riwaq Art Space and Al Bareh Art Gallery for Fine Arts, presents a programme of musical activities, lectures, exhibitions and international performances — built, in the Authority’s words, to build bridges of cultural and human communication between the Kingdom and the world.
For the brothers, the Bahrain evenings were qawwali doing what it has always done: crossing a border not as entertainment, but as a shared language. Fifty years of diplomacy between two countries, celebrated with poems seven centuries old.
This post is a rephrased summary of the Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities’ report of 5 March 2022, shared here for our press archive. Read the original at the link above.
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