IN ISLAMIC countries, in the desert, it sometimes seems as if the call to prayer, although issuing from the minaret, is actually summoned into being by the vastness of the sky. As if the call is itself a response to the immensity of the surrounding silence . . .

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, ‘Shahen-shah-e- qawali’ – ‘the brightest shining star of qawali’ – sits cross-legged, barefoot on the concert stage. To his left are the other members of his ‘party’: eight-man chorus, tabla player, two men on hand-pumped harmonia and, furthest from him, the youngest member of the ensemble, his teenage pupil. Over the drone of the harmonia the chorus sets up a slow pattern of hand-claps. As simple as that. The clapping initiates a rhythm of expectation, a yearning that cries out for the Voice, which will become the medium of still greater yearning. As soon as we hear it – minutes into a performance which will last for hours and leave us dazed and ecstatic – we are held by its implacable power.
In our century there have been only one or two voices like this: voices that cry out beyond the cry, that rend the soul even as they soothe it. A voice like this – like the voice of Callas or of the great Egyptian singer Om Calsoum – longs to be answered by something as beautiful as itself. And so it soars. Higher and further, until it consumes and destroys itself. Or until it finds God. That is why, on Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, it is Nusrat’s voice you hear in the climactic moments of the Passion.

 
Qawali – literally ‘utterance’ – is the devotional music of Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam founded in 10th-century Persia. An amalgam of classical and popular styles of music, qawali, in something like its present form, was established on the Indian subcontinent by the end of the 13th century.
Nusrat himself comes from a line of qawals stretching back over 600 years. He was born in Lyallpur – now Faisalabad – in Pakistan in 1948, and received informal lessons from his father, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, a qawali master. When his father died in 1964 Nusrat began training with his father’s brothers. With the death of his uncle, Mubarik Ali Khan, in 1971, he became the greatest living qawal. Since then, and especially in the past eight or nine years, he has built up a worldwide audience.
Much of the credit for the popularity of Nusrat, and of fellow qawals the Sabri Brothers, must go to the Womad festival and Peter Gabriel’s Real World record label. On cassette, Nusrat’s greatest hits run to over 20 volumes and there are fine concert recordings from Paris (on Ocora) and London (on Navras), but the best-produced albums – such as Shahen-shah (1989) and Shahbaaz (1991) – are all on Real World. There are dozens of remixes and samples of Nusrat floating around the Asian dance circuit but, again, the most sensitive of these are found on Real World’s Mustt Mustt (1990), which crosses Nusrat’s voice with a range of electronic backing tracks, including a dub-heavy Massive Attack remix of the title piece. The Last Prophet, his latest release, returns to traditional form.
By the robust standards of qawali, The Last Prophet is a gentle album, consolidating the repertoire of dedications to prophets and saints, and only gradually reaching the sustained ecstatic heights of ‘Jewleh Lal’, a 25- minute chant on Shahbaaz. The poems of Jewleh Lal, a 13th-century Turkish mystic known more simply as Rumi, offer prophetic description of the great qawal: ‘This voice seizing me is your voice / Burning to speak to us of us.’ Intended to induce a trance-like state of religious delirium, ‘These cries / Sounds of extreme love’ have an overwhelming, transcendental effect on even the most secular ears.
Rumi’s poems combine secular and sacred love, and as qawali has developed so the devotional and secular strains have become deeply entwined. So much so that it is difficult not to hear the high, ringing voice of Nusrat’s male pupil as the embodiment of the feminine beloved. But there is an element of playfulness in all of this as well, with the master (whose father, remember, died when he was just 16) calling across the chorus, treating his pupil with magisterial indulgence: ‘So puppy, you think you can bark?’ Nietzsche warned that he is a very poor pupil who remains only a pupil; and these dialogues point to the time when, one day, a pupil will begin to match his master, perhaps even to fly beyond his reach. How long can Nusrat’s voice last? How long will he continue to soar?

Now, as the chant settles deeper into the body, members of the audience are whirling, throwing money on to the stage. Nusrat’s hands, which initially had been simply rising and falling, emphasising the rhythm, are now tracing patterns in the air. Pitting himself against the massed power of the chorus, he flings back elaborations of the main phrases, leading the chorus in surging, hypnotic repetitions.
Nusrat is no longer projecting his voice; he has become the physical incarnation of the Voice. Much Western religious music seems clammy with death; driven by the gallop of hand-claps and the dust-swirl of tabla, qawali exalts in itself: incandescent, burning . . . ‘I am not a voice, I am the Fire singing / What you hear is crackling in you.’ (Rumi)
‘The Last Prophet’ is on Real World (CD / tape). The Sabri Brothers appear at the Hexagon, Reading, 0734 591591, on 16 May.

Sunday 24 April 1994  

Geoff Dyer 

Source: The Independent, UK

 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a soft-spoken man. Despite his ability to sing, without a microphone, in a voice of such power and grace that he is now South Asia’s most popular musician, in person his words tumble out in whispers, disappearing into his ample chest.
    The Pakistani singer is perhaps the world’s greatest living master of qawwali, a mystical Sufi music in which the voice coils upward like a snake being charmed out of a basket, raising listeners to a kind of spiritual ecstasy.
    Qawwali is among those forms of music in which religion and sex seem most closely intertwined: for while Khan’s lyrics are all based on Islamic law, his voice, accompanied by a party of tabla drummers and harmonium players, has a quavering orgasmic quality that drives listeners wild, causing them to shower the stage with money and dance in a manner that would be considered most unbecoming by the ayatollahs of this world.

Although Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has recorded more than a hundred albums and enjoyed
widespread popularity in Pakistani communities around the world for many years, it is
only recently that Western audiences have begun to discover his work. His profile in the
United States began to soar after Peter Gabriel performed live with him and helped
distribute Khan’s albums in the West. More recently, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sought
Khan out for a collaboration that appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Dead Man
Walking.

    A few days after attending the MTV Video Music Awards with Peter Gabriel, Khan sat
down with me in the dimly-lit lounge of a hotel in midtown Manhattan, attended by an
interpreter and manager. Although he is not a particularly tall man, he weighs several
hundred pounds, with a protuberant mid-section that’s difficult not to notice. But his
hands look like they belong on a little girl, ending in wispy fingertips, and one finger is
adorned by a jade ring the size of a grape. His watch, a sleek black and gold number
from Cartier, would be at home on the wrist of an oil sheik. His eyebrows are barely
existent, and he has a giant, smooth forehead with fiery eyes weirdly planted a bit higher
in the skull than normal.

    As his vast corpulence settled into the couch, his beige gown draping the floor, he
seemed kingly, unearthly, and decidedly out of place in the middle of New York. Sitting
there in the shadows, occasionally rubbing his eyes with evident exhaustion, Khan spoke
softly and without any hint of his awesome lung power. His presence went largely
unnoticed by passersby, who were unaware of the musical legend in their midst.

Dimitri Ehrlich writes for Interview, The New York Times, and other publications. His band, Dimitri and the Supreme 5000, released its debut album last year. He is currently writing a book about music and spirituality.

This time I get to write about a concert I did attend. There can be no argument that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan (1948-1997) was one of the truly great singers of the 20th century in any form (opera, popular song, or qawwali) and in any language. Anyone who care about singing and who are aware of the history of this art form in the 20th century and who have ears to hear the available recordings would not deny Nusrat’s stature as a great man, great artist, exceptional musician. So it seems eminently reasonable, if one wishes to honor the performing arts, to place one well-executed example of his work in his chosen art form on a greatest-works-of-the-era list. And since it is not easy to determine whether in fact audio or audiovisual recordings of the performing arts can be considered the equivalent (for purposes of making aesthetic judgments) of actually being present at a dance performance or musical concert, it makes sense that the judgment of the singers’ live audiences (as individuals and collectively) must be considered by critics and commentators and curriculum committees identifying “great works.”

So of course, what is really on my list is “a concert by Umm Kulthum,” “a concert by the Grateful Dead, “any concert by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.” Great hits of the era, indeed. But to mock the fact that critics and art historians must point to particular objects, specific paintings or novels or compositions, I chose for my list a few credible examples of concerts on specific dates by the aforementioned great artists. Concerts which you who are reading these words in another century surely wish you could have been present at. I apologize if I seem to be boasting of my good fortune–but it does seem appropriate to me that one of my selections be a concert I actually experienced directly as an audience member, someone standing or sitting before the performer in the actual time and space in which the work of art was created.
Okay, in order not to get trapped in trying to justify this particular Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan concert as an especially memorable work of art, let me point to the obvious: It is memorable to those of us who were there because we were there, and this is the universal rule for the performing arts. And let me repeat and quote what I wrote about this concert back then, in my quarterly music newsletter,shortly after seeing and hearing (and being part of) it:

Saturday September 16 was a day I’d been looking forward to for weeks. For years–-since good friends in Europe introduced me to his music and described the hysteria at his live appearances wherever there are Pakistani immigrants–-I have wanted to see Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in concert as much as I’ve wanted to see any living performer. And finally my chance came. Nusrat has been called “the Elvis of Pakistan.” He’s also the inheritor of a long (and sacred) musical tradition called qawwali–-Sufi devotional music, “a dominant feature of Indian Islamic culture since the twelfth century.” This is truly ecstatic vocal music (accompanied by tablas and harmoniums) about the love of God. Expressing and conveying the love of God. What can I tell you? If you haven’t heard his records yet, he is one of the greatest and most expressive singers now alive on the planet. I would even describe him, if this makes any sense to you, as the person Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard have always wanted to be. God’s singer. Who has the power to make us feel our oneness with Divine Spirit by opening his musical mouth. Regardless of one’s religious or cultural background. On the Indian sub-continent, he’s also loved by Hindus and Sikhs and non-Sufi Muslims. He also, on his albums, speaks directly and convincingly to me of my God, as too few singers ever have. And it makes no difference that I don’t speak his verbal language, because his, musical language is utterly universal. I’m not talking about theory. I’m talking about ecstatic personal experience. Get yourself a copy of Shahenshah or any other Nusrat album. You too might find that this is something you’ve forever waited for. So we went to the pyramid-shaped basketball arena at Long Beach State College to see and hear the man described on the ticket as “The Great Khan.” My anticipation was keen. I really believed in this man’s greatness, though I hadn’t heard him live yet, and I knew that many others also passionately believe in and recognize him as a great soul, a star of a very special kind … I mean just slightly beyond even, say, Willie Mays or Jackie Kennedy in our culture (besides, imagine you were going out tonight to see Willie Mays play outfield!) … and I knew or expected that many people who felt that strongly would be, present at this show tonight.


“Star” is an overused word in our culture, but in a certain context it can be understood to have a spiritual side. Sometimes a mere singer or athlete can shine forth as our brightest embodiment, a king but truly a man of the people. Nusrat is often referred to by his public as “Shahenshah-e-qawwali” (the brightest, shining star of qawwali). I worried that we’d have trouble meeting up with our friends who had the tickets, not likely, but I mention it as an indication of this inner trembling I felt (some- thing extraordinarily important may be about to happen to me tonight, unless something goes wrong somehow). We did meet, got inside, and waited in long lines for Indian food being supplied by special concessionaires, because we were hungry but also perhaps because we all collectively knew that we were to begin this evening by eating together. Real (homeland) food. Meanwhile an opening act, maybe an Indian pop singer, was warming us up, but speaking for myself I was impatient. “When do we get to the real stuff? The Man?” And as my own kind of warmup, while waiting in the curry line, I read to my friends from a xeroxed page of a book called Qawwali I’d grabbed from my files as we left the house:


Like other forms of Islamic vocal meditation, qawwali transports the audience into another plane of consciousness. Regular attendees of qawwali sessions often use the concept of travel when they speak of their experience during a qawwali. They feel as if they are traveling to another domain or plane. The external manifestation of this transportation is the ‘haal’, literally meaning ‘state of mind’, often used to denote musically induced ecstasy. This ecstasy can range from rhythmic moving of the head, dreamy dancing, to such extremes as violent convulsions of the body, depending on the person affected. This musically induced state of ecstasy is closely watched by the qawwal [the singers], who find the combination of music and content responsible for the state, repeating it with increasing intensity until a climax is reached, often creating enough resonance to pull in other members of the audience.
–-Qawwali by Adam Nayyar, Islamabad 1988

We ate, found our seats on the arena floor, waited through the pop singer and her band, glanced around at the crowd, mostly Indian or Pakistani, some anglos but not many and, mysteriously, almost no college students. And then Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan took the stage with his party, other vocalists, tabla and harmonium players. I was not disappointed.. He sounded good, the sound of his voice (and of the other occasional lead voice) was familiar to me from the records, and though I wasn’t sure yet that anything remarkable was happening, my feeling was more one of acceptance, being lulled by the music and believing that it would catch me up more and more palpably as the chanted, droning rhythms repeated themselves. I was not sure what was happening yet, but I believed I’d get to like it a lot, and it was easy to give myself to the music, though I wouldn’t have called it a trance, yet. Just a warm happy I’m-hearing-a-good-concert feeling. I wanted to get a little closer, to see the singers and musicians, especially Nusrat, more clearly. There were hired security people preventing audience members from moving from the higher seats to the floor, but I guessed that I could go forward for a little while up the side row we were in without being stopped. I did, and saw the musicians more clearly, and felt like I brought that image of them back with me to our seats, I could feet their presence better now. Good singing, good music, good songs. But not tense. As though it just felt okay to accept it and enjoy it gradually, naturally. Oh, those highs and lows, those rhythms, those repetitions, felt by my body and spirit, not so much thought about by my mind. It was pleasantly easy to be mindless while grooving with this performance.


I had heard from friends including one with us who had attended a Nusrat concert before, that it’s common at these shows for men to rush up and show their enthusiasm by giving money, currency, to the performer. And I’d heard descriptions of the excitement of the men taking part, like girls at a Beatles or Elvis show at the right stage in their careers, keen in any case, caught in a kind of frenzy. And I’d been told, maybe by a German friend, that the audience was an important part of the Nusrat experience, in the right communities. I had the notion before the show that I might like to do the money ritual if it turned out to be not too bold or improper for a non-Muslim, and so I made sure to have a number of dollar bills in my wallet. I think I envisioned something like men sticking bills into a belly dancer’s costume, or perhaps with more dignity leaving bills at the singer’s feet.


It took time (things were building, naturally and wonderfully, with time), but I did see some men make money offerings in the second or third hour of Nusrat’s performance, and what they did was shower the performer, tossing the bills into the air in front of him or over his head. I’d got up from my seat again, as the show went on and again it felt like it would feel good to get closer (well, don’t I always feel that at a good concert?). I was standing in the side row near the front, and I’d watch the occasional man (once or twice a woman, we’d wondered if it was okay for women to do, but it seemed to be; the women in our party felt underdressed when they saw the great colorful finery the Indian or Pakistani women came in) walk past the front row and over to the floor space before the singer (he kneels or sits cross-legged on the low stage, as do the others) and look at him and then throw money. Nusrat would nod to the person who approached him, thus acknowledging the acknowledgement. I was watching, and an Indian man standing near me said, “Go ahead!” as if my eyes showed clearly that I was considering walking past where we were to the midstage area. I guess I had the bills in my hand, that was the other clue that I was considering it, despite my white skin. So okay (the security hadn’t been restricting us at all, us who were standing somewhere near the front). I walked over, and by this time I was happily and naturally dancing, moving back and forth in place like at a Grateful Dead concert, to the unstopping pulse of the music, and that feeling helped take me right to the singer.


I met his eye and threw the bills in the air more or less over him. He nodded slightly to me, still singing,and I (feeling great) continued in the direction I was going, to before-stage-right, intending mostly to head back to my seat and friends, already with some feeling of pleasure at accomplishment (acknowledging and being acknowledged, participating). There were a lot of men standing and dancing, crowding the aisle of the left front section. One man grabbed my hands aggressively and I thought he was like a security guy telling me to go around and not walk down that aisle, but he didn’t let go of my hands and in an instant of understanding and acceptance I suddenly realized he was dancing with me, so we danced, held hands and danced together happily. Another man danced with me, and one of them or another threw some bills at me and gestured that I should pick them up. I declined, not knowing if it was wrong to decline, but I was doing fine just doing whatever came naturally to me. People looked at me appreciatively, warmly, I felt good, knowing my own sincerity and enjoying this feeling of freedom and wet, come and acceptance as I walked, danced, back to our seats. Before long my girlfriend and a male friend and I went back to that left front comer again and danced in the crowd. It felt great. And when the four-hour performance (Nusrat and party, not counting the opening act) was done, we just all felt so high [with no alcohol or other intoxicant having been consumed]. People came up to me and said friendly things. At least two men, one in the auditorium and another at a convenience store a mile away, said, “I saw you dancing!!” One man told us with pride and pleasure that Nusrat was from his home town in Pakistan. The excitement of dancing and being danced with and of feeling so accepted and appreciated by the Muslim men and women, was a wonderful high certainly, but for me it was part and parcel with what I was feeling directly from the music. In hindsight, I could say that I did enter a kind of trance, and that it was not alien to me. I recognized it from, say, the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms in
San Francisco in 1967 when I was 18 or 19. And, thankfully, many other music experiences. I’ve been similarly transported at a Violent Femmes concert in a club. Reading that trance passage again, now, I recognize more surely than I did then (I didn’t want to “try” to have anything happen, just let it take place naturally) that I was in fact in a musically induced ecstasy, encouraged and pushed on by the performer,
by each new verse or song, and supported by the friendship of and safe space created by the rest of the audience, all of us in this altered state together. It was absolutely fantastic. Okay, I got treated nice because I was an anglo and because I had so sincerely and genuinely participated (I guess), and that was a wonderful experience for me, but the main thing (and this is the basis of community) was that we had accepted each other. United by our common love. For the singer, for the singing, and for God. Singer as vehicle of God’s spirit. And each other as vehicles of the singer’s and song’s spirit. Yeah. Something like that. We all had such a good time. Because the singing and the music truly were great, fulfilling needs too large for even a long-winded music essayist like me to articulate. Naw. It happened. Great good fortune. Just a matter of being here now. What else could be the secret of the live music experience?


I don’t know. But I gotta tell you, it gets easier with practice. But at the same time there’s something holy about being a beginner, as I was a beginner that evening in Nusrat’s audience. Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Different tradition. But the same ancient wisdom. Love of God. Love of music. Spontaneity. We don’t have to be so afraid of these things. And I think of Patti Smith [at a club performance a week earlier-see entry #24] even sharing with us, from her experience, that we also don’t have to be so afraid of death and loss. Love of life. What a teaching. Gosh, the things you can team at a concert! School of love, school of awakening, school of community, and refreshing fountain of courage and health and spirit. Drink deep. That’s what I’ve been doing. Who needs to drink spirits? I mean, it’s okay, but for me drinking music is like drinking Spirit itself. And I sure have some great adventures. I’d like to thank the music for constantly calling out to me and getting me into these situations. I can’t help it if I’m lucky … spirits? I mean, it’s okay, but for me drinking music is like drinking Spirit itself. And I sure have some
great adventures. I’d like to thank the music for constantly calling out to me and getting me into these
situations. I can’t help it if I’m lucky …