Do You Need to Be Able to Sing to Come to a Singing Retreat?

No, you do not need to be able to sing to come to a singing retreat. Most people at Voice of the Beloved were once told they cannot sing. The retreat is a devotional, non-performance space: the goal is a freed voice, built in community under a real teaching lineage, and beginners make up most of every cohort.

Do I need any singing experience to attend?

No formal experience is required. Every cohort at Voice of the Beloved includes people who have never sung outside their car, people who sang in a choir decades ago and stopped, and people who were told as children, by a teacher, a parent, or a sibling, that they "can't carry a tune." That sentence follows people around for thirty, forty years. It is one of the most common things Amïe hears in the first circle of a retreat: "I haven't sung out loud since I was nine."

The retreat does not ask you to arrive able to do anything. It asks you to arrive willing to make sound in a room with other people, most of whom are just as nervous as you are.

Why do so many "non-singers" end up at a singing retreat?

Because the fear is almost never about pitch. It is about being watched, judged, and found lacking, usually rooted in one sharp memory from childhood. Once someone understands that the room is not auditioning them, something loosens. The retreat draws people specifically because it is not a performance workshop. There is no recital at the end. There is no ranking of voices. What there is instead is a group of adults, many of them professionals with no music background at all, discovering that their voice was never broken. It was just unused, or protected, or shamed into silence.

This is also why the retreat pulls from far outside any one genre. Gospel singers, worship leaders, R&B vocalists, pop songwriters, hip-hop artists, kirtan (call-and-response devotional chanting) leaders, and complete first-timers all sit in the same circle. You do not need to be South Asian or to speak Hindi, Urdu, or Punjabi to do this work. The tradition Tahir and Amïe teach from was built to open any voice, in any genre, to more freedom and more feeling. What it asks of you is presence, not a resume.

What does "devotional, non-performance" actually mean in practice?

It means the frame around the singing changes the singing itself. In a performance frame, the question underneath every note is "am I good enough." In a devotional frame, drawn from the Sufi and Hindustani lineage Tahir and Amïe were initiated into, the question becomes "can I be honest here." Devotional practice in this tradition has never been about vocal perfection. Qawwali singers, kirtan leaders, and Sufi vocalists across centuries have sung with cracked voices, tired voices, untrained voices, because the intention behind the sound mattered more than its polish.

That does not mean technique is ignored. Retreat mornings include real vocal training: breath work, akaar (open-vowel voice training, singing on a single vowel to build tone and control), and simple raag (a melodic framework) phrases anyone can learn by ear. But the training sits inside a devotional container, not a competitive one. Nobody is being groomed for a stage. Everybody is being invited to open.

What actually happens on the first day for a nervous beginner?

The first day is designed around the fear, not around ignoring it. Circles are small. Nobody is called on to sing alone in front of the group on day one. Most early exercises are group sound: everyone singing the same note or the same simple phrase together, so no individual voice is exposed. This mirrors how the tradition itself was always taught and practiced, in a room, together, by ear, not in isolation with headphones on.

By the second or third day, something predictable happens. The people who arrived saying "I'm just here to listen" are usually the ones leading a phrase back to the group by the end of the week. It is not because anyone pressured them. It is because singing next to other people, inside a tradition that has never treated the untrained voice as a problem to fix, tends to dissolve the fear faster than any solo practice ever could. This is part of why Tahir and Amïe built the retreat around community rather than a video course: a screen cannot hold you the way a room full of people singing next to you can.

Will I be forced to sing solo in front of everyone?

No. There is no requirement to sing solo, and nobody is put on the spot. Some people choose to, later in the week, once trust has built. Many never do, and that is a complete retreat experience too. The daily structure is built around group singing, call-and-response, and small partner work, all of which let a beginner's voice strengthen without ever standing alone under scrutiny.

What if I actually cannot hold a pitch?

Pitch is trainable, almost always, and far more often than people expect. What most self-described "tone-deaf" adults actually have is an untrained ear and an unused vocal instrument, not a permanent condition. The daily akaar and raag work at the retreat is aimed exactly at this: training the ear to hear a pitch and the voice to find it, in a low-pressure group setting where mistakes are expected and unremarkable. If you want a sense of what this kind of foundational voice work feels like before you commit to a retreat, the school's post on how to free your voice and find your authentic singing voice walks through the same principles used in the first days of Voice of the Beloved.

Who actually teaches at the retreat?

Tahir Qawwal and Alexandra Amïe Lyons lead the teaching, drawing on a lineage passed to them directly. Both were initiated into the lineage of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan through his longtime tabla player, Ustad Dildar Hussain, an initiation that was filmed. Tahir spent over twenty years touring internationally with the qawwali (Sufi devotional music) ensemble he founded, Fanna-fi-Allah, playing more than 1,500 concerts and performing at over 250 Sufi shrines. Their documentary Music of the Mystics, filmed across the Sufi shrines of Pakistan, is a useful way to feel the tradition before you ever set foot in a room with them. This is not a wellness retreat borrowing spiritual language. It is a living lineage, taught by people who received it directly, applied to whatever voice walks through the door.

Where does this training happen, and what if I'm not ready for a retreat yet?

Voice of the Beloved runs in Bali and in Tuscany, Italy, both immersive weeks built around this same devotional, in-community approach. If a full retreat feels like a big first step, the most natural place to start is to try a free lesson from the Musical Wisdom masterclass series, which gives you a direct, no-pressure taste of how Tahir and Amïe teach before you commit to anything longer. From there, the Vocal Artistry Library offers a deeper structured path for people who want to keep building at home between live experiences.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know any Hindi, Urdu, or Sanskrit to sing at the retreat? No. Phrases and syllables are taught by ear, the way this tradition has always been passed down, with meaning explained in plain English as you go. Fluency in any South Asian language is not required or expected.

Is Voice of the Beloved a religious retreat? It is devotional rather than religious in the institutional sense. The teaching draws on Sufi and Hindustani devotional practice, but people of any faith background, or none, attend and take from it what fits their own life.

What if I get emotional or cry during the singing? That happens often and is treated as normal, not disruptive. Group devotional singing regularly surfaces emotion that has been held for years; the retreat structure leaves room for that rather than moving quickly past it.

Can total beginners keep up with people who already sing professionally? Yes. Groups include both, and the structure (group sound before solo sound, ear-based learning before notation) is built so a first-timer and a working vocalist can both be met at their level in the same room.

How much daily practice does the retreat actually involve? Retreat days include structured morning voice sessions plus additional group singing through the day, but there is no separate "homework" expected beyond showing up present. It is more immersion than drilling.

Will I get individual feedback on my voice? Yes, in small group and sometimes one-on-one moments across the week, feedback is given, but always aimed at freeing the voice further, not grading it against a standard.

What's the difference between the Bali retreat and the Tuscany retreat? Both follow the same core teaching approach from Tahir and Amïe; the difference is largely location, season, and setting. Details on each are on their respective retreat pages.

Is there an audition or screening to attend? No audition. The retreat is open to any adult ready to show up and participate; no vocal screening is used to admit or reject applicants.

Written by the teaching team at Samā School of Music, founded by Tahir Qawwal and Alexandra Amïe Lyons, initiated into the lineage of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan through Ustad Dildar Hussain and creators of the award-winning documentary Music of the Mystics.