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In October 2022, Pakistani photojournalist Saina Bashir was interviewing Canadian musician Michael Brook for an upcoming documentary on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Brooke and Nusrat had worked together extensively; He had so many stories to share.
At some point, largely out of politeness, he asked: “What are you working on at the moment?” She was not prepared for the bomb that dropped in her lap.
“In the middle of the interview, he checks his email and says, ‘They’ve given me the green light so I can tell you. Nusrat has a new album coming out, and I’m producing it'”, Bashir Recalls. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The documentary, Ustad, is scheduled to be released next year. The album, Chain of Light, was released last week.
How did this happen? How did a set of four unknown songs left by a legend end up in the archives of a London record label?
Well, in 1990, Nusrat and his party (the English term for a qawwali group) recorded four tracks at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records studio in England. The tape of that session disappeared into the label’s warehouse archive, and lay there, forgotten.
No one had thought about this even in 1997, when the great Qawwal died at the age of just 48.
It was only in 2021, when the collection was being moved to a new location, that the music was rediscovered. Label manager Amanda Jones says, “It wasn’t heard from the day of recording.”
The analog magnetic tape had to be digitized before being sent to Brook (who was in the studio for the original session) and Gabriel.
“They were delighted with this discovery of ‘buried treasure,’ both the excellent performance and the pristine sound,” says Jones.
And now it is that, 27 years after his death, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice has become loud again.
a legend is born
If her father had wished, Nusrat would have been a doctor. He was the fifth child and first son of the famous Pakistani Qawwali singer and musician Fateh Ali Khan.
Although the family claimed to come from an unbroken line of Qawwals dating back 600 years, Fateh did not want his son to follow in his footsteps. He pushed him toward a career in medicine, even excluding him from the group of students and musician friends who passed by his house.
But the boy knew that he was not made for the lab or the stethoscope. He used to secretly watch when his father taught his students. He played the harmonica and sang when his ears were blocked.
Her father eventually relented and agreed to train her, but shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with throat cancer and died when Nusrat was 15. The boy’s first public appearance would be at his father’s Chehlum, a ceremony held to mark the end of the 40s. One day mourning period.
In the book Nusrat: The Voice of Faith, author and music scholar Pierre Alain-Baud writes that there were some concerns at this time about the boy becoming head of the family group. He was extremely shy, partly due to his obesity, and was still in the early stages of his training.
But several mysterious signs and dreams – including one in which the family’s patron Sufi saint, Khwaja Muhammad Diwan, appeared to his uncle and announced that Nusrat would “sing and be known throughout the world” – ensured his succession.
Under the guidance of his uncle, Mubarak Ali Khan, the teenager spent years in rigorous practice, transforming his occasionally shrill voice into an instrument of raw power and fleet-footed flexibility.
Nusrat and her party rapidly rose to stardom in the subcontinent in the 70s and earned praise from luminaries such as Hindustani singer Roshan Ara Begum, poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and filmmaker Raj Kapoor.
By the 1980s, Nusrat was performing regularly in the UK, where he became popular among South Asian expatriates. Muhammad Ayub, founder of the music label Oriental Star Agencies, was also releasing his music records there. It was Ayub who introduced former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel to Qawwal in 1985.
Gabriel invited Nusrat to perform at that year’s edition of the music festival WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), which he had launched three years earlier.
Nusrat and her party took the stage just before midnight and performed until 4 a.m., “leaving behind a tired, languid audience,” writes Allen-Baud.
“He opens with just one note of his voice, comes straight in, and you can hear the crowd going silent [on the recording]” Ammar Kalia, global music critic for The Guardian, wrote in his description of the concert. “It was the first time that a lot of these British festival goers would hear this kind of music live, and it blew them away.”
Note is not complete yet
This concert was a turning point in Nusrat’s career. In 1989, he became one of the first artists to sign to Gabriel’s new label, Real World, which released his traditional qawwali album Shaheen Shah in 1989 and the iconic qawwali-fusion record Must Must (a collaboration with Brooke) in 1990. .
The remix of Massive Attack’s title track became a club hit, helping bring him and Qawwali into the global spotlight.
Soon, Nusrat’s distinctive voice started echoing in the background on the soundtracks of films like Natural Born Killers (1994; directed by Oliver Stone) and Dead Man Walking (1995; directed by Tim Robbins).
His music was being remixed by Asian stars like Bally Sagoo and Talvin Singh. It was being cited as inspiration by Carlos Santana, Eddie Vedder and Jeff Beck.
Her collaborations with Javed Akhtar on songs like Ghar Ke Krib, Koi Jaane Koi Na Jaane and Aafreen Aafreen made her a household name in India.
He earned numerous honors around the world, including two Grammy nominations, and toured constantly.
His death from a massive heart attack was sudden and tragic but not really a surprise. He was ill for years. There were allegations that he was killed. Those who worked with him say that he did not give up; He also always wanted to keep working, touring and singing.
Decades later, it feels as if it slipped through the cracks.
Born in a time just before the Internet, their music is much loved but little of their story survives. Some books written on him are out of print; TV documentaries from the ’90s are obscure and little-known.
This inspired Bashir and his co-producer, Zakir Thawar, to spend years combing through footage and traveling around the world to meet people who knew and worked with the maestro.
That film is still about a year away, but until then, four new songs are out. Click here Or to hear his ethereal voice swirling in jagged melismas over the tabla-and-harmonium grooves of Allah or Rahman, and to be filled with raw spiritual longing on Aaj Sik Mitran Di. Or listen to Gaus or Miran’s nimble acrobatics over the ever-changing tempo as the song reaches its climax.
It is a priceless final gift from one of the most talented masters of the subcontinent.
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