Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is considered to be the greatest qawwal of his generation. Qawwali, the Sufi music of India and Pakistan, translates literally as "utterance," and it is an ecstatic, spiritual poetry married to music. The music serves to express...
[more]Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is considered to be the greatest qawwal of his generation. Qawwali, the Sufi music of India and Pakistan, translates literally as "utterance," and it is an ecstatic, spiritual poetry married to music. The music serves to express mystical love and the longing for a union with the divine, and its rapturous sound can transport listeners to ecstasy.
Khan was born in 1948 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, where he lived until his death. His father, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, was a famous classical musician who, despite a six-century family tradition, wanted his son to avoid the difficult life of a musician and study medicine instead. But music was in Khan's blood, and, after years of eavesdropping on his father's music lessons, Khan picked up the trade. Listening to records of his uncle and father for inspiration, Khan borrowed from his paternal tradition, but he put his own touch to the music by introducing a faster tempo.Although qawwali is a Sufi tradition, Khan believed that the underlying quest for the divine transcends religious boundaries and that his music could be appreciated by a non-Muslim audience. A song lyric warns us, "Do not accept the heart that is the slave to reason." During a qawwali performance, the performers sit closely together and play small, hand-pumped harmoniums; tablas, dholaks, and the hand clapping of the audience maintain the rhythm. Khan's singing was echoed by a chorus and by the audience in a kind of call and response. Taking requests, Khan would repeat over and over phrases that resonated with the audience, until the audience reached an ecstatic state.
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