This year, the Festival of Nasheeds is travelling down the valley to take place at Halifax Minster on Friday 5th July 2024, starting at 6.30pm. More details and advance bookings here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/festival-of-nasheeds-tickets-903131599927
What’s a nasheed?
A nasheed is a devotional poem or song in Islam. Nasheeds have been composed, recited and sung for 1400 years, and are still very popular today in muslim communities around the world, including in our surrounding areas of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Nasheeds are traditionally in Arabic, but also in many other languages, including English. The musical style of nasheeds is traditionally classical Arabic modes and rhythms, but they are also sung in a wide range of other styles, including Indian classical music and hip hop. A nasheed is usually performed by singers alone or accompanied by drums, although in some traditions nasheeds are accompanied by other instruments.
Our young people have been celebrating this tradition in Todmorden by learning and sharing nasheeds.
Our first ever live nasheed event took place at Todmorden Community College on 21st May 2022. The performance featured young people from Feversham Academy, Bradford, Parkinson Lane School, Halifax and our very own Hamza Mosque, Todmorden. We were also very delighted to welcome star nasheed artist, Hussnain Hanif.
Here are the children of Parkinson Lane School singing a nasheed from Bosnia, called Bejtullah:
And here is Laiba from Bradford singing and Urdu language nasheed called Ek Baar Madina Mein:
