Sain Zahoor

Sain Zahoor, born in 1937 in Pakistan’s Punjab province, has devoted his long life to the performance of mystical Sufi poetry. He has said that after a recurring dream in which a hand rose up from a grave and directed him toward a shrine, he left home at the age of 10 and began a spiritual search that eventually led him to the ancient city of Uch Sharif, in southern Punjab, a site of many Sufi shrines. There he learned Sufi devotional songs (kalams) from local singers with a particular focus on the poetry of the important Punjabi poet Syed Abdullah Shah Qadri, popularly known as Bulleh Shah (d. 1757).

Sain Zahoor presently lives in Lahore, where he continues to sing for alms at local shrines. At the same time, he has developed an international following after winning the 2006 BBC World Music Award for best BBC voice of the year, an award that had earlier recognised Sufi singers Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen. In recent years, he has performed on prestigious stages around the world, accompanying his singing on a tumbi, a Punjabi instrument consisting of a gourd resonator attached to a wooden stick.