The sound of harmoniums, tabla, clapping hands and soaring voices will fill Bradford Live this month as an international ensemble dedicated to preserving the centuries-old tradition of Sufi qawwali returns to the city.
Fanna-Fi-Allah will bring eight musicians and a whirling dervish to the Bradford venue on Friday, 18 September, as part of a four-city UK tour.
For Bradford audiences, qawwali needs little introduction.
The devotional music has deep roots within South Asian Sufi tradition and has found generations of listeners in Britain, particularly in cities such as Bradford with large Pakistani and South Asian communities.
Perhaps its most famous exponent was the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose extraordinary voice took qawwali from South Asia to international audiences and made him one of Pakistan’s most celebrated musicians.
Fanna-Fi-Allah performs within that classical qawwali tradition, with musicians seated together on carpets and the sound built around voices, harmonium, tabla and the rhythmic clapping characteristic of the form.
Rather than presenting qawwali as a conventional stage performance, the ensemble says it attempts to remain close to the way the music is traditionally performed at Sufi shrines.
It will not be the group’s first encounter with Bradford.
Fanna-Fi-Allah has previously performed in the city, and bandleader Tahir Qawwal says audiences in Bradford and West Yorkshire have developed a particularly strong understanding of the music.
“Bradford has some of the most knowledgeable listeners anywhere in Britain,” he said.
“Playing a room like Bradford Live to a city that already understands qawwali is a real privilege.”
For Tahir, preserving the tradition is central to the group’s approach.
“This music was given to us by our teachers on the condition that we carry it honestly,” he said.
“We sing it the way it is sung at the shrines, seated on the floor, no shortcuts.”
The group has spent more than 25 years performing qawwali and says it has given around 1,500 performances internationally.
Its musicians have studied under teachers of the tradition in Pakistan and India, despite most members of the ensemble coming from outside South Asia.
That unusual journey has helped Fanna-Fi-Allah build an international following while continuing to perform music rooted in the religious and cultural traditions of the subcontinent.
Qawwali can be traced back centuries and is closely associated with Sufism in South Asia.
Its repertoire includes hamd, poetry sung in praise of God; naat, in praise of the Prophet Muhammad; and manqabat, devotional works associated with Sufi saints and spiritual figures.
Performances can build gradually, with individual pieces sometimes continuing for more than 20 minutes as voices, percussion and repeated phrases increase in intensity.
Unlike many Western classical performances, audiences are not necessarily expected to sit silently until the end.
Listeners may applaud, call out in appreciation or respond as the music develops.
And while much of the repertoire draws upon Urdu, Punjabi and Persian poetry, organisers say audiences do not need to understand those languages to experience the performance.
For followers of the tradition, qawwali’s purpose goes beyond entertainment, using poetry, repetition, rhythm and music as expressions of devotion.
Fanna-Fi-Allah’s Bradford appearance follows performances at venues including London’s Barbican Centre and Union Chapel, Birmingham Town Hall, Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music, Warwick Arts Centre and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
The ensemble has also recently toured in Europe, performing in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt.
But returning to Bradford puts the music before an audience with its own longstanding relationship with qawwali.
For some, it will be an opportunity to hear a musical tradition they grew up around performed on one of the city’s biggest stages.
For others, it may be their first encounter with a form of devotional music which travelled from the shrines of South Asia to become recognised around the world.
Fanna-Fi-Allah performs at Bradford Live on Friday, 18 September 2026.
