Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (نصرت فتح علی خان, October 13, 1948 to August 16, 1997) was primarily a singer of qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis, a mystical offshoot of Islam. Nusrat was the son of Fateh Ali Khan, one of the foremost qawwals of his generation in Pakistan. Traditionally, qawwali has been a family business. Nusrat's family has an unbroken tradition of performing qawwali for the last 600 years.

Initially, his father did not want Nusrat to follow him into the qawwali business. He had his heart set on Nusrat choosing a much more respectable career path, and becoming a doctor. However, Nusrat showed such an aptitude for, and interest in, qawwali that his father finally relented and started to train him in the art of qawwali. This training was still incomplete when Fateh Ali Khan died, and the training was continued by Nusrat's uncle, Mubarak Ali Khan.

Nusrat's first public performance as leader of the family qawwali group was in March 1965, at a studio recording broadcast as part of an annual music festival called Jashn-e-Baharan organized by Radio Pakistan. It took Nusrat several years more to perfect his craft, and emerge from the shadow of the groups that were regarded as the leading contemporary qawwals. But once he did, there was no looking back. He firmly established himself as the leading qawwal of the 20th century. His powerful voice and his complete mastery of the genre made him a superstar in the Islamic world, especially in Pakistan and India. He was also one of the first South Asian singers to perform before large Western audiences.

In Pakistan, his first major hit was the song Haq Ali Ali (listen here). This was performed in a traditional style and with traditional instrumentation, and featured only sparse use of Nusrat's innovative sargam improvisations. Nevertheless the song became a major hit, as many listeners were attracted to the timbre and other qualities of Nusrat's voice.

He reached out to Western audiences with a couple of fusion records produced by Canadian guitarist Michael Brook. In 1995, he collaborated with Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack to Dead Man Walking. His contribution to that and several other soundtracks and albums, as well as his friendship with Peter Gabriel, helped to increase his popularity in Europe and the United States. Peter Gabriel's Real World label released five albums of Nusrat's traditional qawwali performances in the West. He also performed traditional qawwali live to Western audiences at several WOMAD world music festivals.

Apparently, when Nusrat toured in foreign countries, he would watch television commercials in order to identify the melodies and chord progressions popular in that country. He would then try to pick similar sounding songs from his repertoire for his performances.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan holds the world record for the largest recording output by a qawwali artist—a total of 125 albums.

A 75 minute documentary film A Voice from Heaven, directed by Giuseppe Asaro and released in 1999, provides an excellent introduction to Nusrat's life and work. It is available on VHS and DVD. His early career is the subject of a documentary film made in 1997 entitled Nusrat Has Left the Building...But When?

After Nusrat passed away in 1997, his nephew Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (a member of the group for many years) took over as the leader of the group.

Nusrat's style of Qawwali

Nusrat was responsible for the modern evolution of qawwali. Although not the first to do so, he popularized the blending of khayal singing and techniques with qawwali. This in short took the form of improvised solos during the songs using the sargam technique, in which the performer sings the names of the notes he is singing (for example, in western notation it would be "do re mi"). He also attempted to blend qawwali music with more western styles such as techno.

Nusrat's qawwali songs usually follow the standard form. A song begins with a short instrumental prelude played on the harmonium and tabla. Then the instruments stop, and the main singers (but not the chorus) launch into the alap, which establishes the raga, the tonal structure of the song. At this point, introductory poetic verses are sung. These are usually drawn not from the main song, but from other thematically related songs. The melody is improvised within the structure of the raga. For example, listen to the verses being sung in a more straightforward way in one performance (listen here). Now compare this to the same verses being sung in another performance with more improvisation (listen here).

After the introductory verses, the main song starts, and the rhythmic portion of the song begins. The tabla and dholak begin to play, and the chorus aids and abets percussion by clapping their hands. The song proceeds in a call and response format. The same song may be sung quite differently by different groups. The lyrics will be essentially the same, but the melody can differ depending on which gharana or lineage the group belongs to. As is traditional in qawwali, Nusrat and the side-singers will interject alap solos (listen here), and fragments of other poems or even improvised lyrics (listen here). A song usually has two or three sets of refrains, which can be compared to the verse chorus structure found in western music. Songs last 15 or 20 minutes on average, with some lasting a whole hour.

Nusrat was noted for advancing other forms of improvisation into the style. From his classical music training, he would interject much more complex alap improvisations (with more vibrato and note bending (listen here). He would also interject sargam improvisations (listen here).

See also

• Music of Pakistan
• List of Pakistani musicians

External links

• Unoffical Fan site Turkish & English  (http://www.nusratfateh.com)
• Fan site with lyrics and their translation in English  (http://www.nusrat.bravehost.com)
• Website for a Nusrat CD released by Sony Music (http://nusrat.com)
• Bandbaja: Pakistani Music Magazine (http://www.bandbaja.org)
• PakistaniMusic.com (http://www.pakistanimusic.com)
• Yahoo discussion group dedicated to Nusrat and his music (http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/nusratfatehalikhannfakclub) (includes photographs, lyrics, translations, song lists)

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