Saturday, March 1, 2025
8:00pm (doors 7:30pm) (first come, first serve - RSVP does not guarantee entry.)
at Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow St., New York, NY

Ustad Naseeruddin Saami is a Pakistani classical vocalist of incomparable depth, power, and presence. A doyen of the Qawwal Bacchon Ki Gharana, or Dilli Gharana, Ustad Saami traces his musical lineage to the great Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar Amir Khusrau (1253–1325 CE). Ustad Saami is a rare master of both khayal, an expressive form of Hindustani classical music, and of the Islamic-Sufi devotional music qawwali, which originated in South Asia. He is also an expert exponent of song forms like Sadra, Thumri, Tappa, Tarana and Dadra.

Ustad Saami was born in Delhi and started his training at age 10. His primary mentor was his Ustad and uncle, Munshi Raziuddin, but other elders of the Dilli Gharana, namely his great uncle Sardar Khan of Lahore, and his uncles Iftikhar Ahmed and Pyaray Khan of Karachi, played significant roles in his life. They imparted to Ustad Saami the style of singing he refers to as ‘Sudh Bani,’ a style centering tonal and emotional faithfulness to a composition. His performances are noted for the healing, spiritual qualities experienced by his audiences.

Solely transmitted through experiential learning, actively subverting notated forms and theoretical precision, Ustad Saami’s music is inextricable from the lives of its practitioners—and from intricate personal relationships bound up in systems of learning, performing, and teaching.

FourOneOne is honored to present a rare, intimate conversation and performance with Ustad Naseeruddin Saami and his sons.

The evening will begin with the Saami brothers performing an invocatory piece, setting the stage for their teacher and father. Ustad Saami will then contextualize his musical practice and purpose within larger historical narratives, in conversation with noted scholar, writer and khayal performer Fawzia Afzal-Khan. They will also be joined in conversation with Rauf Saami and with Nermeen Arastu, a student of Ustad Rauf Saami and Associate Professor of Law and the Co-Director of the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic at the CUNY School of Law.

Ustad Saami, Rauf, Nermeen and Fawzia will discuss, among other topics, the reification of technique; the abstraction of “form” from the lived experience of communities; and the responsibility of transmitting a vibrant, evolving practice to a global audience within colonial and post-colonial capitalist settings.

The conversation will be followed by a khayal performance featuring Ustad Saami, supported by his sons, accompanied on tabla by Tejas Tope.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan is University Distinguished Scholar of English at Montclair State University, and currently a Visiting Professor of Gender and Sexuality at Princeton. She is author and editor of several books on theater, music, and postcolonial literature and theory, including a bestselling anthology of Muslim women's writing post-9/11. Her latest book on understanding Pakistan through its women singers, Siren Song (OUP 2020), is also the subject of a short, award-winning documentary film. Her avocation has always been the khayal gaiki she studied as a teen in her native Lahore, where she was lucky to have had the late Abdulhaq Qureshi of the Kirana gharana and Hafeez Khan of Talwandi gharana as her Ustads. She is honored to now be learning from Ustad Rauf Saami.

We understand that this event may coincide with the start of Ramadan. We will provide light snacks and chai and can share a list of nearby Islamic centers at your convenience. Please write to contact@fouroneoneprojects.org with any questions.

Photo credit: Hassan Kausar.