Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistani Sufi Singer, 48

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani singer whose thrilling voice carried Sufi devotional songs to the world, died yesterday in London. He was 48.
Mr. Khan, who suffered from problems with his liver and his weight, came to London last week for medical and business reasons. He was rushed to the Cromwell Hospital from the airport and later suffered cardiac arrest there, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Khan was the greatest singer of his generation in the genre of qawwali, which means wise or philosophical utterance. Qawwali songs are based on the devotional poetry of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, and often speak of being intoxicated by divine love.
The music seeks to transport listeners, and it works its way to ecstatic peaks with driving rhythms, concise refrains and the spiraling improvisations at which Mr. Khan was unsurpassed. His voice had a raw, impassioned tone and an acrobatic agility. Whether he was repeating a refrain with ever-increasing intensity, streaking through elaborate zigzagging lines, letting loose a percussive fusillade or sustaining a climactic note, he made music that united virtuosity and fervor.
In Pakistan and across the Islamic world, Mr. Khan was a superstar whose fans danced, shouted, threw money and sometimes hurled one another into the air as he sang. He performed in the traditional style, backed by what is called a party, with harmonium, percussion, handclaps and a responsorial chorus.
But in the 1980's and 1990's, he also became what Ravi Shankar had been in the 1960's: a major South Asian traditional musician who also collaborated with secular musicians, Eastern and Western, among them Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam and Peter Gabriel. He was heard on soundtracks of films made in India and Hollywood; he was remixed for dance clubs. In any context, his voice was unforgettable.
Mr. Khan was born on Oct. 13, 1948 in Lyallpur (now Faisalbad) in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Members of his family, including his father, had been singing qawwali for six centuries. His father, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, had intended for Nusrat to become a doctor, but as a small boy, Nusrat eavesdropped on his father's singing classes, and later studied with him.
His first performance was at his father's funeral in 1964. In a 1996 interview, the singer said he dreamed of his father placing his hand on his throat, awakening his voice.
After his father's death, Nusrat studied qawwali with his father's brothers, Salamat Ali Khan and Mubarak Ali Khan. He began performing with them in 1966, and after the death of Mubarak Ali Khan in 1971, he became the leader of the family's party. Adapting the music to his generation, he slightly sped up the songs.
His reputation grew rapidly in Pakistan, where he has released more than 100 albums. He sang for films made in the subcontinent's movie center, Bombay. During the 1980's, Mr. Khan reached westward. In 1985 he performed in England at the annual World of Music, Arts and Dance Festival organized by Peter Gabriel.
He sang with Mr. Gabriel on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's film ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' in 1988, and Mr. Gabriel's label, Real World, began to issue albums by Mr. Khan geared to Western listeners: both traditional-style sessions and Westernized remakes of Mr. Khan's qawwali hits. Other labels, notably Shanachie, have issued some of his older recordings.
Mr. Khan allowed his music to be reshaped for dance clubs by producers including Massive Attack and Bally Sagoo. He recorded with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, and he made gentler, electronics-backed albums with the producer and composer Michael Brook.
In 1996, Mr. Khan collaborated with Mr. Vedder on the soundtrack for ''Dead Man Walking.'' His music also appeared in Oliver Stone's ''Natural Born Killers,'' but he was unhappy that it was used as the background for a prison riot.
''When someone uses something that is religious in that way,'' he said last year, ''it reflects badly on my reputation.''
Despite health problems, Mr. Khan performed to growing Western audiences in the 1990's; in New York, he sold out Radio City Music Hall last year. After being assisted on stage, he would seat his 350-pound frame and begin to sing, tracing intricate arcs with his hands as his voice gathered power.
Mr. Khan is survived by his wife and daughter. Because he had no male heir, he had been grooming his cousin, Rehmat Ali, to carry on the family singing tradition.