Why Learn This Music in Community, and Not Alone?

Sufi qawwali and Hindustani devotional singing were built as call-and-response traditions, meant to be sung in a room full of other voices, not absorbed alone through a screen. A teacher can hear and correct a student's pitch, timing and breath in real time only when they are physically present, and singing together regulates the nervous system in ways solo practice cannot. That is why Samā School of Music pairs video lessons with live cohorts and in-person retreats, not one or the other.

Why Was This Music Built for a Room, Not a Screen?

Qawwali (Sufi devotional music, built around ecstatic call-and-response between a lead singer and a chorus) does not exist as a solo form. The word itself comes from the Arabic qaul, a saying or utterance, and the tradition has always been communal: a party (the group of singers, harmonium and tabla players who perform together) trading phrases back and forth, building intensity as a group, responding to a room that is responding to them. Hindustani classical vocal training carries the same DNA in a quieter register. A raag (a melodic framework built from a specific set of notes, phrases and moods) is taught by a teacher singing a phrase and a student singing it back, over and over, with the smallest correction happening in the space of a breath.

None of that was designed for a camera. It was designed for two or more people in the same room, close enough to hear a note bend a few cents flat, close enough to feel when a taal (a rhythm cycle) has started to rush. Tahir Qawwal spent a decade studying under Pandit Pashupati Nath Mishra in Varanasi, alongside ustads Sher Ali Khan and Muazzam Ali Khan, and harmonium under Rahat Ali. None of that decade happened over video calls. It happened in rooms, in real time, with a teacher listening and correcting as he sang. Our documentary Music of the Mystics, filmed across the Sufi shrines of Pakistan, follows what that same live, in-person transmission looks like at its source.

What Actually Happens When You Sing in Call-and-Response?

In a live qawwali or kirtan setting, the lead singer offers a line and the group answers it, often building the same phrase higher, louder, or with new ornamentation each time it returns. This is not decorative. It is how the tradition trains ears. A student in the chorus learns pitch, phrasing and taal by matching dozens of other voices in real time, adjusting constantly, without ever being told explicitly what to fix. A video cannot answer back. It can model the phrase once, well, but it cannot hear whether you matched it.

Our full breakdown of this structure, including the roles of the lead singer, the harmonium and tabla players, and the chorus, lives in our complete guide to qawwali, if you want the mechanics in depth.

Can a Video Library Really Teach Riyaz (Daily Practice)?

Riyaz (the daily, disciplined practice that builds a singer's voice and ear over years, not weeks) can absolutely start with a screen. A well-made video lesson can teach you a scale, a phrase, the shape of a raag, the counting of a taal, and you can drill it alone every morning the way singers have always drilled alone between lessons with their teacher. Solo practice was never absent from this tradition. It was always the space between sessions with a guru (teacher), not a replacement for those sessions.

The gap shows up in the things notation cannot carry. Even the Bhatkande system (swarlipi, the standard written notation for Hindustani music) cannot tell you how much a note should bend, how long to hold a silence, or how to shape an akaar (open-vowel voice training, typically on "aa") so it sits forward in the voice instead of pressed back in the throat. Those details pass by ear and by presence, corrected live, which is a large part of why a video library works best as a beginning, not an endpoint.

What Does Group Singing Do to the Body That Solo Practice Doesn't?

There is a physical case for community singing that has nothing to do with tradition and everything to do with the nervous system. Research associates group singing and chanting with increased vagus nerve activity, lower cortisol, higher heart rate variability and higher oxytocin, including work coming out of the SingWell Project and studies on group humming and chanting published in the PMC literature. Singers who have felt a qawwali party build toward a climax, or sat in a kirtan call-and-response as it deepens, recognize the effect described in that research: something downshifts in the body that does not downshift the same way singing alone in a car.

None of this is a medical claim. It is closer to what singers have always reported: singing with other people changes your state, and it changes it faster and more reliably than singing at a screen.

Is a Video Course a Waste of Time, Then?

No. A course is often the only honest entry point, especially if you are new to this material, live nowhere near a teacher in this lineage, or simply want to test whether your voice and ear respond to it before committing more time. Our recommendation for a first step is try a free lesson from the Musical Wisdom masterclass series, which gives you a direct feel for how a raag, a taal or a devotional phrase is actually taught before you decide how far to take it. From there, a structured course like Creative Musical Mastery builds real technique, whatever genre you sing in: gospel, R&B, pop, worship, kirtan, hip-hop, or classical. You do not need to be South Asian, speak Urdu, Punjabi or Hindi, or already sing well to start. The tradition was built to be taught to anyone with an ear and a willingness to practice.

What a course cannot fully replace is the room. That is the honest limit, and it is worth naming plainly rather than pretending a video library is the whole path.

What Does Learning in Community Look Like at Samā?

The deepest version of this training happens the way it always has: in person, with other singers, under teachers who were themselves taught this way. Voice of the Beloved is Samā's immersive vocal artistry retreat, held in Bali and in Tuscany, Italy, where a small group of singers spends days together in daily riyaz, group singing, and one-on-one correction from teachers trained inside the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan lineage. It is not a performance workshop. It is closer to what a music school might have looked like a century ago: a household of singers, eating together, practicing together, being corrected together, with the transmission happening in the gaps between formal sessions as much as during them.

If the case for community singing above resonates with you, more than the course structure itself, Voice of the Beloved is where that impulse has somewhere to go.

Frequently asked questions

Can I learn qawwali or Indian classical singing entirely online? You can learn a meaningful amount online, including scales, raags, taal counting, and vocal technique. What is harder to learn online is real-time correction of pitch, tone and timing, which is why most serious students eventually study with a live teacher or in a cohort, even if they started with video.

Do I need to be South Asian or speak Urdu or Hindi to learn this music? No. This tradition has always crossed language and background. What it asks for is ear, discipline and willingness to practice, not a particular nationality or fluency in the original languages of the songs.

What is the difference between a course and a retreat? A course like Creative Musical Mastery or Harmonium Mastery builds technique at your own pace, largely through video. A retreat like Voice of the Beloved is a fixed number of days, in person, with a small group, focused on live correction, group singing and immersion rather than self-paced modules.

Why does singing in a group feel different from singing alone? Beyond the tradition itself, research associates group singing and chanting with vagus nerve activation, lower cortisol and higher oxytocin. Many singers describe a group session as calming or energizing in a way solo practice, however consistent, does not replicate.

Is riyaz still useful if I can't get to a teacher regularly? Yes. Riyaz (daily practice) has always been the singer's own responsibility between sessions with a guru. Consistent solo practice, built on what you learn in a course or from a teacher, is how progress actually accumulates.

What if I've never sung qawwali or raag-based music before? Start with a free lesson from the Musical Wisdom masterclass series. It is built for singers encountering this material for the first time, whatever genre background you come from.

Does this tradition work for singers outside gospel, R&B or Western pop backgrounds too? Yes, in either direction. Singers trained in Indian classical or Sufi devotional forms who want to expand into other genres, and singers from pop, gospel, R&B, worship or hip-hop backgrounds who want to deepen their voice and ear, both use the same underlying technique. The training is genre-agnostic even though the repertoire is specific.

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.