Daily Times

It was in 1940s and 1950s that Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan and Ustad Fateh Ali Khan was a popular duo in qawwali singing. Ustad Fateh Ali Khan used to lead his family’s qawwali party. They were generally known as Fateh Ali Khan, Mubarak Ali Khan and Party. Mubarak Ali Khan always accompanied as a singer as well as harmonium player. The brothers had equal role to play in their stage and studio performances. One of the contributions of this duo was popularising the poetry of Allama Iqbal through qawwali singing. One such number was ‘Tu Rahnawarde Shauq Hei’. There were many more numbers popular in their voices in qawwali format. This qawwal Party also dwelled into rendering of Sufi music.

Incidentally qawwali is a form of Sufi devotional music popular in South Asia. It is popular in the Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan and equally popular in Hyderabad and Delhi in India. It is popular in Bangladesh in the cities Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet etc. Qawwali is part of a musical tradition that stretches back for more than seven hundred years introduced by Hazrat Ameer Khusrau. It has been reported that Allama Iqbal paid tribute to the above referred duo by saying that before the duo spread his messagein the nooks and corners of India, his poetry was restricted to schools and colleges. Indeed this was a great compliment to the duo coming out of our national poet.

Special mention must be made of the duo’s rendering of Iqbal’s poem ‘Shikwa’. Listening to the great rendering of this classical piece of poetry in the voice of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, son of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, of a Pakistan Television recording, one cannot help but reproduce comments of Zameeruddin, a Youtube fan of Nusrat : “A divine voice and sacred poetry. What a combination. God bless them all those behind this unique piece of inimitable vocal performance.”

This article shall be restricted to Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali’s rise and sudden departure from this temporary abode. Before going into the life and works of Nusrat, I would just like to add that originally the qawwali form of singing was mainly seen being rendered at Sufi Shrines to spread Islam. Gradually it gained mainstream popularity but apart from the contributions of Ustad Mubarak and Ustad Fateh Ali Khan Party, it received international exposure through the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Also contributions of Sabri Brothers cannot be forgotten along with those of other famous Qawwali singers like Amjad Farid Sabri, Bahauddin Qutbuddin, Badar Miandad, Faiz Ali Faiz, Munshi Raziuddin, Fateh Ali Khan,Aziz Mian Qawwals, Santu Khan, Agha Basheer and alike.

Birth and legacy: Nusrat’s original name was Parvez and as reiterated above, his father Ustad Fateh Ali Khan was a musicologist, vocalist, instrumentalist, and a famous qawwal. Nusrat had four elder sisters and one younger brother namely Farukh Fateh Ali Khan. In 1947 his family had migrated to Pakistan from their native city of Jallundher in East Punjab, British India (now in Punjab, India). Before partition, his family lived in their ancestral house at Basti Sheikh, Jallundhar. He was the fifth child and first son of Fateh Ali Khan. It is a fact that Nusrat was born with silver spoon in his mouth as he hailed from a family with a rich legacy of qawwali music. Two of his uncles, Ustad Mubarik Ali Khan (already mentioned above) and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, were also famous Qawwals. God was extra kind to Nusrat as his fame surpassed that of his forefathers and siblings as we shall see in our discourse. Nusrat was born on October 13, 1948 in Hazara, Faisalabad, Pakistan and is counted amongst the greatest voices ever recorded, his father wanted him to become a doctor or engineer as he felt that practitioners of qawwali had low social eminence. But fate had other plans written for him and Nusrat too went on to become a musician cum singer par excellence. Nusrat received musical training in tabla (percussion instrument) and vocals.

Factors contributing to rise in popularity: Many connoisseurs of music mention of Nusrat’s rise in popularity to international level due to his collaboration with UK’s artist Peter Gabriel in 1988 when he worked on the soundtrack of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ which gave him the chance to blend qawwalis with Western music. As a matter of fact he rendered Aalap of Raag Darbari in the soundtrack. Muhammad Ayyub Mbe, Proprietor of Oriental Star Agencies, Birmingham deserves commendation for introducing Nusrat to Gabriel. Despite this impression, Nusrat had already become popular in Pakistan as he had started singing as a solo artist at the tender age of sixteen. It happened immediately after his father death in 1964. Ten days after his father’s death, Nusrat had a dream in which his father appeared and instructed him to sing and the young lad gave his first public performance at his father’s funeral ceremony 40 days (chehlum) later. Initially he joined his uncles in the qawwal party and adopted their style of singing. He, being an innovative artist, started introducing his own musical phrases and adding his own creative touches to his forefathers’ style of music and developed his unique, distinguished style of singing qawwali in due course. This initiative drew attention as it was a deviation from the routine. Such participation continued till 1971 when Nusrat’s uncle Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan died. Nusrat Khan was announced as the official leader of the family Qawwali party which now became known as ‘Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mujahid Mubarak Ali Khan and Party’. The whole world was open in front of him. With this new responsibility, his first performance was in Radio Pakistan’s celebrations namely “Jashn-e-Baharan’ (Spring Festival). He rendered his Kalam in many languages including Urdu, Punjabi, Persian and Hindi.

Nusrat adds his own touch of class: As time passed Nusrat had become a proficient singer who was blessed with an extraordinary voice, relatively thin and could perform at higher notes with a high level of intensity for several hours. His mastery over rendering ‘sargams’ (Wikipedia refers sargam as singing the notes instead of the words of a composition, with use of various ornamentations such as meend, gamak, kan and khatka, as part of a kheyal performance) as an essential ingredient of not only his qawwali rendering but also in singing in other formats of light music, attracted his listeners not only at home but abroad also. Thus his own style of rendering in these formats became popular due to experimenting with the tempo and voice ranges. He was usually accompanied by tabla, harmonium, and backing vocals in qawwali concerts. Then he started experimenting with the use of electric drums, saxophone and keyboard in singing light music; geets and ghazals etc. It did not take long for his fame to spread worldwide. He was credited with introducing qawwali music to international audiences. Soon he was popularly referred to as “Shahenshah-e-Qawwali” (The King of Kings of Qawwali).

As reiterated above, Nusrat Khan’s fame had spread beyond Pakistan and he performed at the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) Festival in London in 1985. He started getting invitations to perform abroad. He travelled to Paris, France in 1985 and then in 1988. He performed in Japan in 1987 at the invitation of the Japan Foundation. In 1989, he performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Overall he performed in about forty countries.

Nusrat’s performance in France: According to website, Enlighten : “Khan performed in Paris in 1985 which was the beginning of his international career. The performance was at the Theatre de la Ville. Pierre-Alain Baud, a French music researcher, journalist and associate researcher with the department of World Religions and Culture, Dhaka University, first heard Nusrat at his Paris performance. He then observed the life of the great legend and wrote a biography and deep account on Khan’s life. His book was published in 2008 in French and had the title Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Le messager de qawwali. The English version of the book was translated by Renuka George. Alliance Francaise de Islamabad collaborated with Alliance Francaise de Lahore on the 21st of February 2016 and with the support of the Embassy of France, paid honour to the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Nusrat Khan’s performances in the United States of America: Nusrat also performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York in 1989, earning him admiration from the American audience. In the 1992–93 academic years, Khan was a Visiting Artist in the Ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States.

Collaborations: As mentioned above, Nusrat teamed with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack to ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ in 1988.As per information available on net, Peter Gabriel’s Real World label later released five albums of Khan’s traditional qawwali, together with some of his experimental work which included the albums ‘Mustt Mustt’ and ‘Star Rise’. Nusrat provided vocals for ‘The Prayer Cycle,’ which was put together by Jonathan Elias, but died before the tracks could be completed. Alanis Morissette was brought in to sing with his unfinished vocals. Nusrat also collaborated with Canadian musician Michael Brook on the albums ‘Mustt Mustt’ (1990) and ‘Night Song’ (1996). Khan also grouped with Pearl Jam’s lead singer Eddie Vedder in 1995 on two songs for the soundtrack to ‘Dead Man Walking’.

Nusrat in Japan: Nusrat and Party’s performance in Japan caught the eyes of his fans at home and abroad that had won him famous title of “The Singing Budha”. The party performed ‘Ya Haiyo Ya Qayyum’ in qawwali format, live at the National Theatre Tokyo, Japan on 20th September 1987.

Views of Dr Pierre-Alain Baud: Dr Pierre-Alain Baud, a researcher, academic and author of his biography Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the messenger of Qawwali in 2008, spent several years in Nusrat’s company. In an interview during his visit to Lahore, he recounted his experiences with the melodic enigma. His response to the various questions put to him is summarised here. About the first concert he attended, he said that it was held in Paris in 1985 at Theatre de la Ville. It was organised by Soudabeh Kia, a French-Iranian lady. She was the first person to introduce Nusrat to non-resident Pakistani audiences. As the luck would have it, Peter Gabriel did the same, until then Nusrat was little known in France. His only introduction there was in the form of some Sufi or South-Asian music aficionados. Dr Buad added that a major part of the audience that evening was Pakistani and Indian and the response was just like in Pakistan; people standing up from their seats and going down to the stage to offer ‘vel’ (donations) or requesting him to sing such or such an item; a couple of sensitive listeners went into a trance. It was an astonishing discovery for Dr Buad, widening his knowledge of Sufi music in an enormous way and Nusrat was such a presence.

Dr Buad was nostalgic about his first meeting with Nusrat. He heard Nusrat again live in 1988 or maybe was 1989. Dr Buad had been listening to his recordings again and again but the two met in autumn 1991, when Buad was en route to attend Nusrat’s concert at an old French monastery. It was an autumn morning. They were at the Railway station in Tours, France. He was there, the ‘Singing Buddha’ from the Theatre de la Ville in Paris, waiting for the connection that would take him and his musicians to Fontevraud Abbey for his last concerts of the year in France. “We, members of the enthralled audience who had already seen him perform thrice in Paris the week before, were going to the Abbey too, to witness the incredible freedom of his voice once again. The shock this meeting produced was scorching. Uncertain, trembling words started a conversation, which slowly grew into a dense dialogue in the shade of the priory. Generous exchanges [were] interrupted by unexpected vocal demonstrations, stunning silences [and a] fiery look…Years later, having accompanied him on numerous international tours, I remained a spectator stunned by his vertiginous voice: I do not fully understand the mystery of his song, but an intimate resonance intrigues and unnerved me as soon as he sat down, cross-legged on the stage and hurled out his mad love song to the Divine,” Dr Buad recalls.

This meeting at Fontevraud was the beginning of their association with Nusrat. After the few days they spent time together at Fontevraud. Then Nusrat invited him to follow him on his tour to Italy, and then to meet him at his home in Pakistan. From that point of time, Dr Buad accompanied him for over five years, on a number of his international tours, in the capacity of an assistant of his major promoter. For the past 30 years, (Kia) on behalf of Paris municipal Theatre de la Ville, has been promoting numerous Pakistani artists worldwide. Dr. Buad went with him to a number of European countries, Brazil, Tunisia, and was with him in New York. He followed Nusrat to dozens of places in Pakistan. “Nusrat had innumerable facets: enigmatic and innocent, colossal and peaceful, inspired and ordinary, all parts of the same person who inflamed myriads of spectators in Lahore, Paris, Florence, Tokyo or New York, crossing linguistic and cultural, generational and social barriers with the greatest of ease.” Baud and Pierre Alain wrote another book in 2015 titled Nusrat: The Voice of Faith. To further elaborate, Dr. Buad’s is quoted here from a fragment of the portrait he sketched about Nusrat in his biography foreword: “Singing Buddha in Tokyo, Quintessence of the human voice in Tunis, The Voice of Paradise in Los Angeles, The Spirit of Islam in London, Pavarotti of the East in Paris, Shahenshah-e-Qawwali in Lahore . Over the space of about 15 years, this chosen singer, one of God’s madmen, one of God’s sweetest, shot to planetary fame. And then he disappeared, too early…leaving a thousand footprints behind. A man of superlatives: weight (impressive), octaves (six, supposedly), albums (125 at the beginning of the 1990s according to the Guinness book of records, maybe twice that many by now), videos that can be consulted on the Internet site YouTube (over 2,000, certain of which have been viewed a million times in a single year), concerts (by the thousands), Google references (hundreds of thousands), cassettes and CDs (by the millions). And he is yet a man of deep simplicity. His all-consuming mission was to spread a message — the kind and beautiful words of the Sufi poets, mystics, permeated by an Islam reflecting love and union. A man outside of time, bewitching us with the madness of his declarations of love addressed to the Divine. A man truly of his times too, opens to all kinds of experiments, all kinds of fusion. Rooted and universal. Committed and free.”

Published in Daily Times, November 12^th 2018.