Abida Parveen

Abida Parveen married Ghulam Hussain Sheikh, senior producer at Radio Pakistan, in 1975. Her husband was very supportive of her career and retired from his job in the 1980s to manage her career. The couple had three children. Her husband died of a heart attack in the early 2000s.

Abida Parveen is a heart patient and suffered a heart attack in 2010. Her health improved following treatment.

She is known for her unique dressing style. She wears a long buttoned-up collar kameez with salwar, and drapes an ajrak, a Sindhi duppatta, over her shoulders. She always lets her dark curly hair untied.

Abida Parveen was born in 1954 in Mohalla Ali Goharabad in Larkana, Sindh, Pakistan, a place known for its rich Muslim Sufi culture. She hailed from a long line of Sufi mystics and singers; her father Ustad Ghulam Haider being a prominent Sufi singer who founded his own devotional music school.

Her father introduced Abida to Sufism and music when she was very young. She was naturally inclined towards devotional music and started singing when she was just three. On recognizing the potential his little daughter possessed, her father started training her himself.

She was later trained at her father’s music school and was mentored by Ustad Salamat Ali Khan of the Sham Chorasia gharana. On growing up, she used to perform regularly at shrines of Sufi Saints along with her father. Her father, an open minded man, realized that his daughter was a lot more talented than his sons and chose her as his musical heir over his two sons. The step he took was an uncommon one in the conservative Muslim society.

She began performing at Dargahs and Urs in the early 1970s and started singing for Radio Pakistan, Hyderabad, in 1973. Singing on radio introduced her voice to a bigger audience which made her quite popular in no time. Her first big hit was the Sindhi song ‘Tuhinje zulfan jay band kamand widha’.

After a few years of singing for the radio channel, she was declared the official singer of Radio Pakistan in 1977. Already a popular figure by now, her fame skyrocketed from here on. As a singer of ghazals and Sufi music, she helped to revitalize the genres and popularize them to audiences beyond her native Pakistan.

In 1980, she performed at Sultana Siddiqui's Awazo Andaz and left the listeners mesmerized with her renditions of ghazals and devotional songs, bringing Sufi music to a new level. Her international glory rose phenomenally during the 1980s.

She also began touring and performing internationally during this time. Her tours to the U.S., U.K., and France proved to be huge successes. Since then she has continued travelling to many other countries, spreading Sufism, peace and the divine message through her music.

She gave a live performance in Chicago in 1988 which was recorded by Hazrat Amir Khusrau Society of Art and Culture. The next year, her performance in London's Wembley Conference Hall was recorded by the British Broadcasting Corporation and aired for an hour.

Abida Parveen is regarded as one of the world's greatest mystic singers and one of the foremost exponents of Sufi music. She is credited to have revitalized and popularized Sufi music on the international stage during her career which has spanned over four decades. Her most famous songs are ‘Yaar ko Humne’ from the album ‘Raqs-e-Bismil’ and ‘Tere Ishq Nachaya’ which is a rendition of Bulleh Shah's poetry.