Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan By Ustad Ghulam Haider Khan
n the month of Ramzan in 1963, I went to Faisalabad to see my ailing mentor Ustad Fateh Ali Khan Qawwal. In the evening a session was held in the baithak where all his disciples were present. Every one of us had to chant a selected raag one by one. But the tabla player was missing, and soon a bulky teenager by the name of Paiji Khan was summoned to the room to fill this absence. Now jhumra, a time-cycle of 14 beats, was selected, and all the disciples of the great qawwal rendered Raag Marubihag turn by turn. And everyone noted the prodigious expertise with which the fat young Paiji Khan played the tabla. Later I came to know that this boy’s real name was Nusrat and that he was the son of Fateh Ali Khan Qawwal.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born on the 21st of October 1948 at Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) in a family of professional qawwals whose lineage went back to one Haji Maroof, a man who came from Afghanistan to India and settled in Basti Sheikhan, Jullundar City. After Partition Nusrat’s family moved to Pakistan and settled at the Lasoori Shah Road, Jhang Bazaar, of Faisalabad, which is where Nusrat was born and grew up. After the death of his illustrious father in 1964, Nusrat had to lead his qawwal party. And quickly he became known as one of the country’s foremost qawwals, one who was prone to using rare and difficult raags in his compositions and had an astonishing rhythmic sense.
Nusrat’s first tour of Europe was arranged by Radio France and after that he went to England, where Peter Gabriel, a famous composer for Hollywood films, booked him for the background alaap in a crucifixion scene (the film was called ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’). Now began a chain of foreign tours for Nusrat, while his audiocassette sales shot up all over the world.
In Japan he was given the title of ‘Holy Buddha’ whereas in America he was called ‘Mr Allah Hoo’. The government of France awarded him with a Grand Prix. Indeed Nusrat was reigning with his voice over the globe. And his musical personality was deep and diverse enough to sustain the reign: he sang as well as composed songs for Indian and Pakistani films.
Nusrat was a genius. He revolutionized the qawwali. It was, as in all instances of genius, a product of many seemingly unrelated factors: he developed the old aarifaana kalaam of his ancestors and harmonized it with his lightning-fast sargam (the Sa-Re-Ga-Ma fluctuations for which he is still famous) and modern orchestral forms. He loved classical music, which remained his core ambition. His ideal was Ustad Salamat Ali Khan (he said this to me himself). Though Nusrat quickly became a very busy performer, he made sure to practice classical raags in his spare time. From 1965 to 1990 he performed classical music at the ceremonies in Faisalabad that marked the death anniversary of his father.
As a shagird of his father, I feel proud to have made room for Nusrat once in Lahore. This was in the 1980s: I was General Secretary of the Pakistan Classical Music Guild and had arranged a concert at the EMI headquarters. Nusrat performed Raag Khambawati in the presence of the leading ustads of the time, and the consensus by the end of the show was that he was indeed a genius. On another occasion, also in Lahore, the Anjuman-e-Tahaffuz-e-Funkaran invited Nusrat and his “party” of qawwals to perform in an open concert that was held in the main bazaar of Shahi Mohalla. Nusrat, following his family tradition, began with Raag Sultani, which he sang for one and a half hours, first in the slow jhumra taal, then in tarana and teen taal. His rhythmic innovations and complications stunned the audience; even the great Ustad Shaukat Hussain, who was accompanying him on tabla, said: “It is the very first time I have played with Nusrat and if I were not used to playing jhumra with this kind of depth, he would have downed me in rhythmic calculations.” In this same session, Nusrat was given a shield by the fraternity of musicians.
But who was the man behind the legend? Here I can say that he was gentle and humble. He was fully aware that his voice lacked the bass notes, and he selected a suitable horizontal note for his soprano voice and worked at it with a hard practice of days and nights. Ultimately he had chiseled it to the point where his range was greater than all the keys of a harmonium.
He toured the whole world but his great wish was to perform in Spain. And, as it happened, at one of his London concerts, the queen of Spain was present. She invited him right away to perform at the Alhambra (the magnificent palace of the Abbasids, now converted into a church). Later Nusrat told me that he felt intense spiritual pleasure while performing Kalaam-e-Iqbal in that great monument of Islamic glory.
Despite his earth-shattering success he remained a generous man: respectful of his seniors and kind to his juniors. He was married to his cousin and a daughter was his only issue. He adopted his nephew Rahat, son of his younger brother Farrukh Fateh Ali, and trained him in the musical art.
It was diabetes that took him away from us abruptly in August 1996. He died in London at the peak of his career, in the prime of his life, at the age of 48.
He is buried in Faisalabad. He has left behind a great repertoire of his recorded singing, which will enthrall generations to come.
Ustad Ghulam Haider Khan lives in Lahore