Saira Peter is a pioneer of Sufi opera whose unique style is being embraced in Pakistan, a country with an uneven musical history. Saira Peter’s kitchen is a pretty good representation of her as a professional singer and as a person. Nestled in the basement of her East London residence, her carefully positioned keyboard keeps her ready for long hours of practice, instruction for her students and also for collaboration with two doting men in her life, her father and her husband. From here, she explains while samosas and tea are cooking on the stove, springs the distinct style of Sufi opera that has caught fire in Pakistan. Throughout the decades, music in Pakistan has courted controversy and broken barriers — from bhangra, born from the Punjabi folk music of the 1940s around the nation’s inception, to poetic ghazal music to disco. With the rise of conservative Islam in the 1970s and ’80s, however, music developed a tension with the government and saw heavy censorship under the regime of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Still, some Pakistani pop music has crossed borders — “Disco Deewane,” by Nazia Hassan, charted around the world in 1981; Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan collaborated with Peter Gabriel, of Genesis fame. And with a long tradition of the mystical strain of Islam known as Sufism, their spiritual Qawwali poetry remains timeless. | 