COMPOSERS: Various
LABELS: Navras
PERFORMER: Abida Parveen, Lotfi Bouchnak (voices)
CATALOGUE NO: NRCD 8001/02
Fans of Sufi music will home in on the name of ABIDA PARVEEN from the double album with Tunisian colleague LOTFI BOUCHNAK, as her rousing performances do for women’s singing, in their more lyrical, less florid and competitive way, what qawwali does for men’s. Her stupendous contralto-to-soprano range has the main share of the space anyway.
Bouchnak, forceful and suave against his own accompanying group, should be heard in his own right as this is another memorable voice, though he has only one track to himself. There’s a rather unsuccessful attempt to combine at the end, at its best when the singers alternate while the instrumentalists busk along in the breathing spaces.