Why Sanam Marvi Sang for Justajoo: Inside Our 2024 Sufi Night at Hyderabad Gymkhana

It is rare for a fundraising evening to feel less like a fundraiser and more like a homecoming. But that is exactly what happened on a cool January night at the Hyderabad Gymkhana in 2024, when Sanam Marvi — the celebrated Pakistani Sufi vocalist, herself a daughter of Hyderabad — sang for the Justajoo Foundation.

The evening had been months in the planning. Volunteers had reached out to the artists, secured the venue, designed the tickets, and quietly asked Hyderabad’s business and Rotary community to come and listen. Sanam Marvi accepted the invitation without hesitation. So did Asghar Khoso, the Sufi musician whose tabla had carried so many of the city’s gatherings.

The music as the message

Sufi music has always been about dissolving the distance between self and other. That night, between qawwali and folk, between an old kalam and a contemporary verse, the room shifted. People stopped looking at their phones. The chairs at the back filled up. By the time Sanam Marvi told the audience her own story — her years on the road, the family that raised her, the music that found her — there were no strangers in the room, only neighbours.

The funds raised that evening did not buy a building or commission a study. They paid for a year of ration packs, for medicines for cancer patients, for school fees for first-generation learners, and for an emergency response when the rains came that summer.

Why this matters

Pakistan’s non-profit sector often borrows its language from international NGOs — “impact metrics”, “logframes”, “deliverables”. The Sufi Night was a reminder that giving in Sindh is also cultural. It is an evening of music. It is a shared meal. It is a long conversation over chai. People give because they were moved, because they were remembered, because they were invited home.

If you missed the 2024 evening, the next gathering is in planning. Subscribe to our mailing list — and if you would like to host a parallel evening in your city, we would love to hear from you.