When Vedi Sinha from Aavahan Project started singing “It’s a good thing my pot broke/I missed filling the water” (Thank God my pitcher broke; I was finally free from drawing water) The audience did a double take. Her voice is husky, commanding. It moves effortlessly from earthy folk to full-throated rock, as Sumanth Balakrishnan’s bluesy guitar swirls around the melody. Percussionist Makarand Sanon switches effortlessly between drums, cajon, djembe and sea rattles. His sound is felt. Now, undoubtedly, the words are not there. The pot is a symbol of worldly attachment; after a decade of noise, this kind of Sufi music feels like a reset.
“There is a lot of confusion around Sufism,” says award-winning artist Sonam Kalra, who has performed with Abida Parveen and Coke Studio and has her own band, The Sufi Gospel Project. In a decade filled with Sufi nights in clubs, Bollywood’s repetition of Mast Qalandar and adding Maula or Allah Hu to make songs ‘Sufiana’ lost something. “Sufism is not a style or a brand,” says Kalra. “It comes from deep spiritual inquiry.”
Now, a new generation is reviving the modern mehfil without watering it down. Sufi flows through djembe, cajón, banjo, blues guitar, jazz riffs, techno beats and Carnatic phrases, fueled by voices that change, stretch and refuse to stay in a box.
stick a stick in it
Invocation Project
The band of three does not work within the traditional toolkit of Indian folk or Sufi music. No harmonium, no tabla. The video for their 2025 track Doud features the band in sharp suits and John Lennon-style sunglasses, while the music is based on chilled, Jack Johnson-esque acoustic rock. The lyrics question the grind mentality, asking: What, exactly, are we running from? Aadhi Gagri, another track, moves equally freely, sliding from gentle guitar riffs to Indian classical music to rock, its lyrics embracing imperfection.
”We are rooted in Sufi philosophy,” says Sinha, 33. ”But we change the stories, the song structure, even the language.” Sinha often writes his own songs, and draws inspiration from the Rajasthani traditions of Malwa and Kabir, Nirguna philosophy and the writings of mystics like Kashmiri poet Lal Ded and Bengali spiritual thinker Lalan Fakir. Guitarist Balakrishnan brings a background in rock and blues. Sanon, the percussionist, “can make music out of salt shakers and pouches,” Sinha said with a laugh.
Sinha first encountered Sufi music at the age of twenty after watching Padmashree Prahlad Singh Tipanya’s performance at the Kabir Yatra in Bikaner. She kept crying on the set. She says, “It felt as if I had taken my first breath in years.” Kabir led her to Mira, Mira to Shams, Shams to Daoism. “Aware of history and geographies, down-to-earth people seem to arrive at the same truth.”
The freedom to experiment with music took time. Sinha admits that she was initially attached to Sari, Ektara, “I thought a woman who wears philosophy was expected to be peaceful.” Since then she has become loose. “Fluidity is the point of Nirguna and Sufi love.”
loud and clear
Aanchal Srivastava
The qawwali format usually involves tabla, dholak and harmonium. But Srivastava’s crew also works with keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars and drums. It’s less fusion and more physics. “To reach a bigger audience, you need more sound. When I sing, you need to feel it. So even the electric guitar is just for amplification.”
Their live shows feel like modern festivals – cozy, intimate yet engaging. Even while singing the age-old Bulleh Shah Kalam, Srivastava’s husky voice rules the room. The tempo never exceeds 100bpm, and yet the audience is brought to tears. “People cry not because I sing well, but because they rediscover the feeling they had forgotten. We are surrounded by chaos and have forgotten who we are.” The crowd includes people above 20 years of age and reaches up to those above 60 years of age. “In Delhi, we also introduced student discount after DM received requests from young people.”
Srivastava has sung with the artists of Coke Studio Pakistan and his rendition of Deen Shagana Da for Four More Shots in 2023 went viral. She has been in the band since 2014, when she was also working in a PR agency in Mumbai. He sang everything. Bollywood, English pop, whatever stuck. He assumed that classical music would not reach far. But his first English program was unsuccessful. “I failed miserably! Someone asked me politely what I was singing, but they said, ‘At least you have a good voice’.” The band continued to try new sounds and names. But in 2023 he discovered Qawwali. “That’s when everything fell into place – my tune, my instrument, my instrument, my stage, my audience, my voice, the songs.”
10/10 new notes
Jasleen Aulakh
Aulakh grew up in Chandigarh listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Abida Parveen and the Wadali brothers, as well as Boney M, Blondie and Jim Reeves. It shows all. Her sound sits somewhere between Sufi, folk and soft rock – and refuses to settle. On stage, she is absolutely fluid, pulling off instruments like Tibetan meditation bowls, derbuka, djembe, cajon, xylophone, morchang (a jaw harp), storm drums… or whatever feels right at the moment.
The biggest influence on him is his mother Polly. “I started out singing English covers,” says Aulakh. But at the age of 20, she fell in love with Shukna, her mother’s poem that imagined a more just world for women. The idea came to her mind that she could mix homely verses with traditional Kalams to make the philosophy closer, more alive. His 2023 track is based on his mother’s poem ‘Bhanti-Bhanti Ki Chidiya’, which is about a bird who learns about ego and prejudice from humans. It ends with Kabir’s Kalam, reminding that pride is futile, and in the end, we all return to dust.
Aulakh knows that she does not fit the image of a Sufi artist. “I was raised by my mother and grandmother. I saw them defying the norms. They did all the things that men traditionally do. They handled all the finances, changed light bulbs and supervised the construction of our house. It inspired me to become a little radical, to fight for the space. Sufi philosophy offers a way to do that with softness and depth.”
Their audience transcends age and boundaries. “I hear from listeners in India, Pakistan, Canada, the UK.” Once, while traveling, she met a Hungarian woman in a café who asked when she could hear her perform live. Aulakh sang a song for him on the spot. Kalam was about discovering Ranjha, finding God instead and rejecting Him because He was not Ranjha. When he finished speaking, the woman asked, “Have you received your Ranjha yet?” She didn’t understand the words, but she understood everything.
trans-continental
Mishra
It feels delightfully surreal to see UK-based band Mishra perform on qawwali. You don’t often see international musicians attempting Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But his Akhiyan Udrik Diyaan segues seamlessly into an Irish reel (Rathlin Island), with banjo, tabla, low whistle and clarinet all playing.
The band consists primarily of UK-based musicians – folk artists Kate Griffin and Ford Collier, tabla and santoor player John Ball, jazz double bassist Joss Mann-Hazel and western classical clarinetist Alex Lyons. He had already covered UK, Irish and American folk and classical Indian music before he met Indian fusion and Sufi singer Deepa Shakti. “We learned Sufi music like kids in a sweet shop,” says Collier. The result: Turn O Spinning Wheel (2025), an album that blends their international folk styles with the hypnotic grooves of qawwali.
Collier admits the challenge was restraint. “With five musicians, things can get messy fast.” So Bari Bari leans into the groove of bass and bass clarinet, while Akhiyaan Udik remains airy led by diya whistle and five-string banjo. Most of his audiences are new to Sufism, and are often surprised by its intensity. “When the fever is at its peak, you can feel the excitement in the room,” says Collier.
Box: Something Old, New and Borrowed
Los Angeles-based Carnatic singer and musician Aditya Prakash Adept at musical code-switching. Trained in South Indian classical music, he incorporates jazz, funk and rock into his work – and keeps returning to Sufi poetry. Why? “It’s rooted in love and humanity, and the audience has an immediate deep emotional connection with the music.” In 2019, his group re-imagined Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘Tumhein Dillagi Bhool’, moving away from qawwali to something more orchestral with violin, saxophone, piano and trumpet. In his solo show Room-I-Nation, he performs Don’t Think with frenetic music and frightening video projections of history and people dancing at high speed. Now he has taken up another classic, Damadam Mast Qalandar, for Riz Ahmed and Anil Karia’s upcoming film.
Meanwhile in Delhi, DJ-producer Sartek has sampled ‘Tumhein Dillagi Bhool’ for his folk-house track Sufi Take. His rule is simple: don’t tamper with the soul. “You have to leave the sound and the core emotions untouched – the pauses, the riffs, the raw delivery. I wouldn’t overturn something sacred just to make it club-friendly.” Qawwali already has repetitions, call and response and long compositions that leave you awestruck. “Electronic music gives me the tools to amplify that feeling,” he says.
From HT Brunch, January 31, 2026
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