ISLAMABAD: Music lovers including traditional Qawwali listeners observed the 25th death anniversary of legendary singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on Tuesday.
Known as the “King of Qawwali”, Khan was born on October 13, 1948, of a 600-year-old line of qawwali singers in Faisalabad.
Khan was not only popular in Pakistan but also in the rest of the world. He sang predominantly in qawwali. The qawwali is Islamic devotional music designed to bring its performers and audience to a state of rapture and trance-like communion with the divine.
His songs are still alive among his fans and also youngsters, and have defined the art form of qawwali for generations to come.
Most of his fans are from Pakistan and archrival India where he sang many songs for Bollywood movies and music albums.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Khan holds the world record for the largest recorded output by a qawwali artist — a total of 125 albums as of 2001.
With his stunning voice, Khan’s first public performance was as the leader of a qawwali party, at a studio recording broadcast as part of an annual music festival — known as Jashn-i-Baharan, or Spring Festival — organised by Radio Pakistan.
His first major hit was the song Haq Ali Ali while he also did joint ventures with renowned international singers.
Khan’s performance at the 1985 Womad, an international arts festival, held on Mersea Island in Essex, finds him at the raw prime of his talent. As the first generation of the British Asian community was coming of age and finding its own identity, Khan’s alighting in the nation would have been a cultural lodestone; a bridge to the past of their parents, as well as an acknowledgement of their diasporic present.
It not only marked a turning point in attitudes towards global music in the United Kingdom, but among qawwal practitioners themselves.
Until Khan started playing internationally, this music was considered a purely religious expression. The first of his many performances in secular environments helped transform this powerful, devotional form into an emblem of south Asian culture recognised around the world.
For many, his voice is quite unlike any other. At turns heavy and hulkingly powerful, yet also nimble and pointedly precise, his vocalisations came to epitomise not only the tradition of the qawwali but the art of singing itself.
He passed away on August 16, 1997, at the tender age of 48, having become one of the world’s most outstanding vocalists.
Paying rich tributes to Khan’s singing, fans on social networking sites praised him, saying “Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the greatest singer of the millennium.”
“His style, his voice, music everything was unique. It is always difficult to sing his songs in his style, even the professional singers are not able to come close to his style while singing his songs,” a tweet read.
