Teaching Islam in Song: Storytelling and Islamic Meaning in Sindhi Sufi Poetry Performance

Abstract

This article examines techniques with which performers of Sindhi kāfī in Kachchh, Gujarat, interweave Islamic teachings with dramatic events from regional narratives in order to locate musico-poetic affect within a paradigm of Islamic meaning. I analyze three implicit performance logics by which kāfī singers incorporate explication and storytelling into their performances, with each logic engaging in distinct ways with the allusive meanings of Sufi poetic texts. This article thus illuminates how the performative process of linking aspects of Islamic belief, history, and philosophy to sympathy for narrative protagonists and to feelings born of lived experience encourages the rich indexicality that undergirds musical affectivity.

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