FANNA-FI-ALLAH Sufi Qawwali Ensemble to Return to Bradford Live
Bandleader Tahir Qawwal leads the acoustic ensemble through a four-city UK run following sold-out European dates.
One of the world's leading ensembles in the classical qawwali tradition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan brings eight musicians and a whirling dervish to Bradford Live on Friday 18 September 2026, for one night only.
Fanna-Fi-Allah have spent more than a quarter of a century carrying qawwali out of the shrines of Pakistan and India and onto concert stages across the world, in some 1,500 performances. The ensemble performs seated on carpets, entirely acoustically, exactly as the music is sung at the shrines: harmonium and tabla beneath a front line of voices, hands clapping the rhythm, and the whirling dervish turning as the music rises.
Led by Tahir Qawwal on harmonium and lead vocal, the group trained for years under masters of the tradition in Pakistan and India and is among the very few non-South Asian ensembles to have been accepted into the qawwali lineage on its own terms. Their repertoire moves through hamd in praise of God, naat in praise of the Prophet, and manqabat in praise of the saints, building over long, ecstatic arcs that can carry a single piece past twenty minutes.
Bradford is not new ground for the group, who have performed in the city before, and West Yorkshire holds some of their most faithful listeners. This September's concert is part of a four-city UK run.
Qawwali is the devotional music of the Sufis of South Asia, roughly seven hundred years old, sung to open the heart rather than to entertain. It is participatory: audiences call out, applaud mid-phrase, and rise to their feet. Newcomers are welcome, and no knowledge of Urdu, Punjabi or Persian is needed to follow it.
Tahir Qawwal, bandleader, said: "This music was given to us by our teachers on the condition that we carry it honestly. We sing it the way it is sung at the shrines, seated on the floor, no shortcuts. Bradford has some of the most knowledgeable listeners anywhere in Britain, and playing a room like Bradford Live to a city that already understands qawwali is a real privilege."
Following performances at Barbican Centre and Union Chapel in London, Birmingham Town Hall, the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, Warwick Arts Centre, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow and Bradford Playhouse, the ensemble continued its international run this June, selling out its Amsterdam concert with audience members turned away at the door, before continuing to Rotterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt.
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