Reading Reflection- The Film A Voice from Heaven

Reading Reflection

A Voice from Heaven | Directed by Giuseppe Asaro | Film Located on ARES
Produced by Alessandro Sforza, Giuseppe Asaro, Shafiq Saddiqui |Crossmedia Communications Production, USA

Short Answers

What does the narrator credit Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan with doing for the genre of qawwali?

How does qawwali further break into the popular music realm?

How does music producer Michael Brook compare our own music culture with that of a pious and Pakistani culture?

How does Nusrat’s and qawwali performance help audiences to achieve trance?

What were some of Nusrat’s international experimentations and collaborations? What were some of the reactions or critiques to his new musical direction?

Short Answer (5 points)
200 words/ 6 – 8 sentences

In the film A Voice from Heaven (1999/2001), we learn that famous qawwali singer Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan collaborated and experimented with qawwali in concert, popular music, and movie soundtrack settings. Drawing on the film and Hiromi Sakata’s work “The Sacred and the Profane” (1994), How did Nusrat strive to maintain a balance of qawwali’s spiritual and religious meanings in these new and popular contexts? Do you think that qawwali still retain their essential meaning as a religious genre outside of traditional contexts such as Sufi shrines?