Sindhi Sufis, Sheedis and Saints: Shaping Cultural Identity through Music

This chapter discusses musical traditions in the south-eastern province of Sindh in Pakistan, focussing on the Sufi and the Sheedi communities. Historically a through road for international commerce and cultural exchange, Sindh has a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Subsequent to the Muslim conquest of Sindh in 711, Sufi travellers and missionaries brought with them a legacy of devotional music and poetry that has left a profound impact on Sindhi cultural identity. The chapter sheds light on the Sufi legacy in Sindh, suggesting also that Sufism promotes moderate Islam and thus fulfils a deradicalizing function. The chapter subsequently focuses on the Sheedi community, descendants of the Arab-African slave-trade. The Sheedis, some of whom are Sufis, are known for their lively singing and dancing traditions, reflecting the strong links to their African ancestry. For the Sheedis, music is also a source of employment that has helped forge a new hybrid cultural identity by allowing them to maintain an ancestral continuity to Africa and at the same time affirming an independent regional Pakistani identity in the face of much discrimination. Music is thus instrumental in ‘reinventing’ a cultural and ethnic identity. The chapter illustrates how both Sufi and Sheedi musical traditions represent the Sindhi cultural landscape through devotional song, dance and shrine-veneration.