It's best to ask qualified Islamic scholars on Music and other matters. The reason is if they on purpose misguide you then they will be held accountable. Do not make innocent PDF members accountable please.
From listening to different scholars, I heard different opinions. Some are very strict against all musical instruments because people misuse the gatherings and others consider daff, qawali, nasheed as fine, they say that these days Haram music is everywhere and people are moving away from Islam so they say Nasheeds, Qawalli, Daff poetry is fine as long as you dont do Haram acts.
Keep in mind, the daff is a musical instrument and it was used by small girls in front of Prophet peace be upon him.
Also as some brother mentioned, Islamic history had certain extent of light music. The Ottomans invented the Musical Band, these days every single muslim nation uses Army Band, Guard of honour band, National Anthem etc.
Lastly I hear many brothers mention things like. I dont follow any group, I dont follow any Fiqh, I dont follow any scholars, I only follow the way of Prophet peace be upon him. This sounds very attractive but this not the correct way. The Quran and Hadith that came to us was collected and compiled in to books by the great Islamic scholars, they decided which hadith is fine and which is weak, they translated the Quran, they are the ones who made the 4 fiqhs because Prophet peace be upon him at times did different things, these things are proven through hadith. This is how all the fitna and challenges were sorted and Islam became strong because millions of new muslims converted to Islam and they didnt need to start from the scratch. All the different hadith and opinions were already separated in to 4 different fiqhs until the 21st century.
The sad situation of the 21st century is people are moving away from the classical scholars and are claiming we follow directly Prophet peace be upon him but in reality we are only follow the texts which are translated by 21st century Facebook scholars. I know in the 21st century it is very confusing but the Islam that was here for 1400years is the correct Islam. We dont need any new modern Islam. We just need some brain cells, be humans and educate ourselves. The Ummah will grow again. Instead Ummah is chasing the dunya and then some dare to claim we need new modern Islam.
Imagine every new Pakistani child is born and he/she starts to learn science and technology from scratch and does not learn anything from our current scientific research. He/she will die before they even have any break through and so will the next generation. The same goes with any other subject. It's like throwing all the research PAF has done in the bin every 10 years and start again from the beginning, just because we think we are better than the old PAF people or we have more money.
