ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the material aesthetics and ethical understandings of a changing vocal technique in Shah Jo Rag, a devotional singing tradition in Sindh, Pakistan. Over the last century, a new high-pitched voicing technique has emerged and gained currency within the rāgī faqīr devotee community, coproduced through material and symbolic intertwining of the faqīr’s body and their accompanying instrument. Within the discursive circuits of an expanding listening public, a minority of faqīrs came to interpret the intense high vocal sounding as the wailing of women at the Battle of Karbala, which encodes their practice as a way to express Shi‘i piety.
