Zarsanga, Saaein Zahoor win Aga Khan music award

Laureates of the 2022 Aga Khan Music Awards were named, stated a press release. The triennial Awards, established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2018, recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence.

Award winners and recipients of a Special Mention will share a prize fund of $500,000 as well as opportunities for professional development. These opportunities include commissions for the creation of new works, contracts for recordings and artist management, support for pilot education initiatives, and technical or curatorial consultancies for music archiving, preservation and dissemination projects.

Zarsanga, the famous singer from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, is known as the Queen of Pashtun Folklore for her career-long devotion to the orally transmitted traditional music of tribal Pashtuns. Sain Zahoor, the popular Punjabi musician with a lifelong practice of singing Sufi poetry in local shrines and festivals, often accompanied by ecstatic dance.

The Aga Khan Music Awards reflect the conviction of His Highness the Aga Khan that music can serve as a cultural anchor, deepening a sense of community, identity and heritage, while simultaneously reaching out in powerful ways to people of different backgrounds.

In naming the laureates, the Awards Master Jury expressed its desire to support as many outstanding nominees as possible from the geographically and culturally diverse pool of close to 400 nominations in a time of urgent need for musicians and music educators. While contributing to the preservation and ongoing development of musical heritage, many of the laureates draw on the power of music to raise awareness about social and environmental issues.

Laureates of the Aga Khan Music Awards will be celebrated at a ceremony and series of affiliated events in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, organised in conjunction with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture on 29-31 October 2022.

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