Album: Various Artists, The Rough Guide to Sufi Music (Second Edition) (World Music Network)

Reviewed by Michael Church

Sunday 31 July 2011

This fascinating CD takes the listener to the mystical, liberal side of Islam, where the puritanical and negative effects of orthodoxy do not hold.

A Turkish ney-flute solo kicks things off, followed by the Al-Kindi ensemble from Syria; we progress via Tamil Nadu to Senegal, and thence to Pakistan. The late great qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan delivers his crazy flights, but my favourite tracks are by Punjabi gypsy singer Reshma, and Cheb I Sabbah from Afghanistan.

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