Music of the Mystics, An evening of Qawalli

The songs which constitute the qawwali repertoire are primarily in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali and Punjabi.^[2] There are some in Persian from the Mughal era,^{[citation needed]} and a smattering in Saraiki and dialects of north India like Brajbhasha and Awadhi.^[3][4] There is also qawwali in some regional languages but the regional language tradition is relatively obscure. Also, the sound of the regional language qawwali can be totally different from that of mainstream qawwali. This is certainly true of Chhote Babu Qawwal, whose style of singing is much closer to the Bengali Baul music than to the qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for example.

The poetry is implicitly understood to be spiritual in its meaning, even though the lyrics can sometimes sound wildly secular, or outright hedonistic. The central themes of qawwali are love, devotion and longing (of man for the Divine).