This piece would be suitable for any programme that likes to hear not only world music, but the background on world music. There?s a constant bed of Qawwali music under the whole piece and I would have preferred a break now and then. In fact my production decision would have been to play the interviews dry and illustrate occasionally with music that could be heard without talk over it. The drawled accents of the speakers coupled with the slow hypnotic nature of the music sounds a bit like the backdrop of a marijuana trip at first. But keep going and there?s lots of interesting stories coming out ? the couple?s description of their encounters with Pakistanis, the place that Qawalli has in the lives of people there, the description of teacher/student relationships are all fascinating behind the scenes glimpses of a music that most people would have heard and know of fairly superficially.
The audio whipped out around 16 minutes so there are a couple of minutes missing at the end of the piece posted here.