The Sufis

Tonight I had the opportunity to listen to a group of Sufi musicians in a small venue not far from our apartment. Sufis seek God through ritualistic music and dancing. Their belief system is inherited from Islam, but they often focus on mysticism more than traditional Muslim communities. Warm, yellow light hung low in the incense-thick air, disappearing into the dark corners of the ceiling. The intricate patterns on the rich red rugs snaked beneath the six Sufi musicians against the wall. It was hot, but it felt right to be sweating as I listened to the tribal rhythm of the drums and the airy whistle of the Nay flute. One Sufi would lead each song, drawing their voice into the room between flourishes from the flute. Then with whirling and excited accents from the drums, the whole group would join in with strong voices, reverberating through the small chamber. Around the room, those listening had all contracted the rhythm of the Sufis, swaying, dancing, or clapping. There was connection—and communication that supersedes verbal exchange.

Earlier in the week I attended a performance of traditional Arabic music at the Cairo Opera. Up in the back of the highest balcony, compulsory tie from the ticket box around my neck, I looked down on the National Symphony and the elite Cairenes nestled on the floor before them. As the lush swell of strings filled the room, chests around the room swelled with pride. The well educated and powerful leaned forward in their seats and rocked with the coursing symphony, tapping the dancing rhythms of the violins and Qanun.

And then there was a moment this morning: I sat in a drum circle with five boys at Ana Al-Masry, an NGO that serves street children in Cairo. This week has been the first time many of these boys have experienced structured musical education. As we locked into rhythm, I watched them engage emotionally in the beat we had finally learned. The walls pulsed with the booming of the drums, and the music became the most tangible thing in the room.

The Sufis are on to something. Music is spiritual. As humans, we need purpose beyond survival, we find beauty in sunsets, and we experience stimulus through music that goes beyond and outside of all our other daily experiences. Music has always been an escape for me. There’s movement in music that you can surrender to, you abandon control and let it take you where it will. There are things that need to be communicated and explored, and when words fail, music exceeds expectations. This is human. In many ways, the Rock music that has been my escape—driving bass, fast, hard drums, and strident electric guitar—is just a modern adaptation of the writhing pulse of the Sufi music that has inherited the tribal beats of ancient people. And that beat unlocked something in the children at Ana Al-Masry this morning.

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One of the differences I’ve noticed between Western and Eastern music is the way a song is ended. In Western music, there’s often a grandiose swell as the music slows and the musicians linger on each note. In the Eastern music I’ve experienced so far, the music frequently speeds up as the end approaches, then everything abruptly stops.

As the Sufi musicians approached the end of their songs, volume and tempo would frantically increase until the room sounded like it would wrench apart at any minute, then suddenly there was silence… and a new song would softly begin. It seems fitting that the music of Egypt would transition like that. In the streets of Cairo, outside the sweaty building housing the Sufi musicians, is a society just rounding such a transition. The hot pressure of unrest rose until a surging revolution released it. And now the city seems to be cooling, though maybe only temporarily, as a new era for Egypt begins.