Kafi and qawwali
The Sufi song of the Punjab, created by Shah Hussain and perfected by Bulleh Shah.
The kafi is a short poem with a refrain, made to be sung, in which a Sufi speaks to God as a woman speaks to her absent lover. Shah Hussain of Lahore, in the sixteenth century, is counted its first great master; Bulleh Shah of Kasur in the eighteenth and Khwaja Ghulam Farid in the nineteenth carried it to its height.
Kafis are sung at shrines, at urs festivals and in the gatherings of dervishes, often by qawwals, groups of singers with harmonium and tabla who repeat lines and phrases, building intensity until listeners fall into ecstasy. The Patiala and Sham Chaurasia singers, and later Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, made the Punjabi kafi part of the great qawwali tradition.
Because the kafi uses the language of village love and household chores, of the spinning wheel and the river crossing, it has always belonged to ordinary people as much as to mystics. Bulleh Shah's lines are still sung in Punjabi pop songs, film songs and at Sikh weddings as easily as at Sufi shrines.
More music forms
The Guru Granth Sahib is arranged by raga, not by author: the scripture was meant to be sung.
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The heroic ballad of the Sikhs, sung to the small dhad drum and sarangi in front of the Akal Takht.
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Unaccompanied verse sung at speed by two or three voices, the Malwa cousin of the dhadi ballad.
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The short, witty couplets that fly back and forth during giddha and bhangra.
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Three-line verses of love and longing, sung in duet between lovers or friends.
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The firefly-spirit who wanders the land in song, reporting what she sees.
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The school of classical singing born at the court of the Maharajas of Patiala, famous for its daring, fast and ornate style.
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The singing family of Sham Chaurasi near Hoshiarpur, whose greatest masters, Salamat Ali and Nazakat Ali Khan, moved to Pakistan in 1947.
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The songs women sing through a Punjabi wedding: ghoriyan for the groom, suhag for the bride leaving home, and sithniyan to tease the other side.
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The loriyan sung to babies and the rhymes of the courtyard, the first poetry every Punjabi child hears.
The laments women sing for the dead, and the ritual mourning in which they beat their breasts in a circle.