Gospel Music?

Last month, DLuebbert posted this item containing a video of a performance by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In the comment thread, he gave a wonderful introduction to the basic ideas in Qawwali music. If you haven't seen it already, check it out now. It will help you understand the rest of this post.One of the issues that arose in that discussion was the "alap," or opening, portion of a qawwali tune, in particular the arhythmic, improvisational nature of the the alap tends to sound foreign to western ears. It does, however, have a rather long-standing tradition in south-asian, middle-eastern spiritual music.I'd pointed this out in the end of that comment thread, but I came along rather late in the game. So, I decided to post the same video here. It's a chant of a prayer in Arabic. The prayer comes from the Baha'i religion, but this kind of chant is common in Islamic culture as well. In fact, this is referenced in Jon Hendricks' lyrics for A Night in Tunisia, "Thrill to the chant of - the MuezzinCallin' all t'pray aroun' the closin' o'the dayBecomes a regular occurrence"I do not know the name of the woman doing the chant. It's not likely to have been a recording of a musical performance per-se. Rather, I'm guessing it was recorded during an observance of a Baha'i holy day. The backing slide show is mostly the Baha'i gardens on Mt. Carmel, in Haifa.Like the alap portion of a qawwali song, this chant is entirely improvised. I've heard many individuals chant the same prayer, and it's never quite the same even when the same person repeats it. Also, you can hear a similar 12-note scale with the seemingly arhythmic, yet poetic, wandering.All of this, to me, underscores the devotional nature of this music. I like to think of it as south-asian, middle-eastern gospel music. Whether it's a qawwali tune sung as part of a sufi ritual, an Islamic call to prayer in a mosque, Baha'is observing one of their holy days or a Sunday chorus in a southern Baptist church, the purpose is pretty much the same. And, for many people, so is the effect.