Nusrat has not left the building

It's been ten years since Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan passed away on Aug 16, 1997. But the Shah-en-Shah of qawwali still reigns in the hearts of millions.

(A shorter version of this article appeared in Outlook, Sep 3 issue. Link: http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070903&fname=Legacy&sid=1)


Chhap tilak sab cheeni re mose naina milay ke
Prem bhati ka madva pilay me
Matvali kar deeni re mose naina milay ke

(You’ve taken away my identity by just looking at me. You’ve made me drink the love-potion, you’ve maddeningly intoxicated me by just looking at me.)

This 13th century qawwali of Amir Khusrau was a favourite of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and audiences went mad when he sang this, or for that matter any of his compositions. The above lines may well have been composed about him, for he simply was an intoxicator. It’s been ten years since he died on 16th August 1997 at Cromwell Hospital in London, but his magic lives on. If one was not told that Khan has passed away, one wouldn’t know, for you always stumbles upon some composition of his that you’ve never heard. He holds the record of recording a staggering 125 albums.

His records sold more than Elvis, says an article on the National Public Radio (USA) website. Jeff Buckley, the singer whose promising career was cut short with his drowning at the age of thirty, was a great fan of the Ustad, and used to call him, “My Elvis”. It is an irony that Nusrat passed away on the same day as Elvis, twenty years after him. Even more ironical is the fact that Buckley also died in 1997, and in the same month when his interview with Nusrat was published in Sambhala Sun in May. In the interview, Jeff tells Nusrat that the first song he heard of his was ‘Ye jo halka halka suroor hai’, and that it saved him; he was going through such a bad phase.

Dildar Hussain, 49, who played tabla in Khan’s party, performed with him from 1979 till the end. Hussain recounts performing with Khan at Rishi Kapoor’s wedding in 1979. “We started at ten in the night and went on till seven in the morning. He sang Halka Halka Suroor for two and a half hours and the audience was simply mesmerized.” Hussain recalls another occasion in Colchester, England, when they were slated to perform for half an hour, and went on for well past six hours. “It was cold, and it was raining, but all the white people were just in a trance and wanted him to go on,” Hussain recalls.

“You can’t talk about sun’s brightness, that is stating the obvious,” says Kailash Kher about Khan, who has been a long standing inspiration for him. He got hold of some rare recordings of Nusrat from a friend in Delhi way back in 1985, “when Nusrat was not really known in India.” Kher, who is sometimes dubbed by the media as Chhota Nusrat, has been approached to sing with Eddie Vedder at a tribute concert for Khan. Khan had collaborated with Vedder for two ‘masterpiece’ tracks of Dead Man Walking, namely The Face of Love and The Long Road. In India, ironically, Khan’s mass fame came with a plagiarized version of his song. Everyone knows the song Tu cheez badi hai mast which was ripped off from Dam Mast Mast. Since Bollywood thrives on romantic songs, qawwalis which intertwine divine and human love, became easy fodder by twisting them a little. Another song that would have enraged Khan was Mera Piya Ghar Aaya in the film Yaarana which starred Rishi Kapoor. Even the lyrics were lifted and Madhuri gyrated gaudily to a song that was supposed to be devotional. “Ustad ji was unfazed by all this,” says Hans Raj Hans who was given a break by Khan in Kachche Dhaage, “He was a dervish. He was happy even when he was being plagiarised. He used to say that this means that message is spreading.”

Khan was famous across the globe before he hit the mass market in India. He had been promoted by Oriental Star Agency of Birmingham, the company that owns the maximum number of his records now. He toured across the world, latitudinally from Bombay to Birmingham; longitudinally from Japan to USA. Peter Gabriel took great interest in his work, and his company Real World released several tracks of his. A lot of experimentation was done, trying to fuse sounds from East and West. The collaboration with Michael Brook brought about Mast Mast in 1990, which had instruments from across the world. Khan received flak for corrupting the qawwali form, but he always believed that tradition is a living thing, and it is the responsibility of a musician to innovate and keep it alive.

Khan had already injected life into qawwali, by marrying the folk form with Hindustani classical music. His khyal interludes are unparalleled, and they added to the intoxicating power of qawwalis. In a traditional qawwali, he would begin with a Persian invocation to God, and then gradually the tempo would increase. In the same song, he could use Persian, Punjabi, Urdu and Hindvi with ease. His voice would rise like a crescendo, and his hands would gesture the beats, and he was like a man possessed when singing. Khan brought in khyal in qawwali, and his student Salman decided to do some experiment with Rock. And Junoon was formed. Salman Ahmad first met Khan in 1990 at a fundraising concert for Imran Khan’s cancer hospital. “He sat onstage, cross legged on a Persian carpet, looking like a Punjabi Buddha, while his qawwali group brought out the harmoniums, tablas, and cups full of Lahori chai,” he recounts the first meeting. Salman, who had grown up on Pink Floyd and John Lennon, was asked to play while Khan sang Mast Mast. Salman asked what he should do, and Khan replied with a ‘childlike innocence’, “whatever your heart tells you to do.” This turned out to be the most important advice, Salman tells. Salman recalls the concert of Nusrat at the Hockey Stadium in Karachi, in March 1996, “We had just lost the quarter finals to India in cricket, and the mood was depressing. As soon as Nusrat started singing Dum Must Qalandar, Halka halka Suroor and Allah Hoo, the atmosphere became joyous, cathartic and transcendental!I was totally swept up in the emotion of his voice as was everybody else in that stadium. It was one of the most memorable concerts that I've been a part of and it illustrated the powerful healing power of qawwali.”

Ten years after Khan, his legacy is being carried forward by his nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who may not be a genius and a ‘dervish’ like him, but has his style. Then there are his other two nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam, who are also doing very well – Peter Gabriel has collaborated with them too and Real World has released their albums. Besides them, there is Naeem Abbas Rufi, also his student and our own Kailash Kher and Rabbi. Bollywood has a lot of space for qawwali now, and has almost become a formula to include one qawwali in every second film. Among these and the rest, Khan is still the best-seller. Nupur Audio, which acquired a lot of audio and video from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Academy in London, sells 5000 CDs every month in India, their creative consultant tells.

For a genius like Khan, it is expected to find fans in the most unlikely quarters. So you can find a group called Brooklyn Qawwali Party in New York, headed by percussionist Brook Martinez. While working at the World Music Institute, Martinez disovered that Khan’s music sold than anyone else’s. He heard him live at Meany, and then there was no looking back. In 2004, he formed his party, and the instrumentalists began performing Allah Hu using saxophone, trumpets, and trombones. They would sound like an Indian wedding band when you hear them first, because of the use of organs. However, the music immediately catches you with their jazzy rendition of Khan’s music, and the beautiful interplay of instruments. One can hear their music online at brookmartinez.com. Marinez believes there is an organic connection between jazz and qawwali, “The main organic connection between qawwali and jazz is that they are both based around improvisation.  We both play songs and then improvise within the form of the song.   Qawwali is also comparable to American gospel music because it is a collective choir of voices that improvise more collectively.”

In the United Kingdom, Gaudi, an international dub and reggae artist, has just come up with a tribute album called Dub Qawwali. Gaudi has been hooked on to Khan’s music from the 1980s and has qawwali vocals in the title track his 2004 album Bass, Sweat and Tears. Gaudi says that Khan is immensely popular in the UK and the beauty of his music “is the different ways in which his music touches all these different people: for some it’s the spiritual and religious aspect, for others the lyricism and depth of message … many fans of Nusrat and of Qawwali music don’t even speak the language however it doesn’t stop them being moved or touched by the power of his voice or the journey of the music.” Gaudi took years to bring out this album. He spent two months just listening to various tracks that Rehmat Gramphone Company, the initial producers of Nusrat, had sent him. He knew the task was daunting, and did not want to use popular tracks as that would seem opportunism. The album features unheard tracks of Nusrat, and Gaudi has done a great job of fusing Jamaican dub beats with Khan’s vocals. The title track, Baithe Baithe Kaise Kaise Rog Lagaye is particularly scintillating.

Farjad Nabi, a Pakistani documentary filmmaker, made his debut in 1998 with Nusrat Has Left The Building…But When? . The title is a take on the famous phrase “Elvis has left the building”. This phrase was always announced after an Elvis show. Later it acquired the meaning on anyone passing away, or someone past his days of glory. The film was an experimental film, shot in just over a week. The film was a collage that clippings of Nusrat songs from 1970s till the end. It insinuated that with commercialization, Khan had probably lost his early touch towards the end. Farjad says, “Nusrat had been singing for decades before Peter Gabriel discovered him. The sudden recognition and money must have effected him in some way. Since the film is a personal response to the change in his music, I can only say that I had felt deeply disappointed at the change.”

Farjad has a point. From the simple arrangement of harmoniums and tables and Khan’s indomitable lung power, which created a complex web of music with chants, classical interludes, unparalleled poetry, the volcanic fervour in Khan’s voice, which simply pulled in the audience, to techno instruments of the West dominating his voice, it does sound like a compromise. However, when you hear the sounds, the jazz musicians, Senegalese jembe, the dub beats jamming with Khan’s voice, you know he is the ambassador of love and music. Like Salman says, “He inspired me to see with the heart and think beyond borders...”. It seems that. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan dead is more powerful than Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan alive. Nusrat has not yet left the building…

limericks

5 limericks that I wrote for a limerick contest:

May 2004 Sushma Swaraj threatens to shave her head and sleep on the floor if Sonia Gandhi is made the prime minister। It's an irony that Indian people had given their verdict by defeating Sushma Swaraj who was pitted against Sonia in MP elections।

There lived a fiery tongue like a broken barrage
She lost polls to an Italian and cried 'Swaraj'
"Even though I'm wed"
She said, "I will shave my head"
So she put the budding minister back in the garage.-------

1991-1996. Narasimha Rao and his art of silence.Rao, despite the fact that he knew many languages, barely spoke in anyone. He would act only when he was forced to do so.

The old pouty man was a polyglot
Yet his motto was 'Speak Not'
A mosque fell, led to a riot
The old man just kept quiet
He kept quiet till he died in his old cot.
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There are many unlucky numbers. No one has thought about 23. Sanjay Gandhi's plane fell on June 23 1980. CISF revolted in Bokaro on June 23 1979. They were routed by the army overnight. CISF was disarmed and re-armed in 1983. Kanishka, the most infamous crash in the history, happened on June 23, 1985. The first line mentions a Milton poem where he is perplexed about turning 23.

Milton was baffled on turning twenty three
India's prodigal son's plane fell on twenty three
CISF wanted to be free
They fell on twenty three
Kanishka on the same day dived into the sea.
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1989-1990.The rise and fall of the man called VP Singh. He rose like a wave and receded the same way. The media made him the best thing that happened to Indian politics. In a few months, they would turn him into a villain.

They sang: He is a faqeer, not a king;
The Bofors-buster became a big thing
India was Mandal-ed
The king was bundled
Humpty Dumpty's fall was quite intriguing.
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1999-2004.AB Vajpayee. And the constant tussle within him what to say. He condemned Modi and the next day was all praise for him. He was known for changing his statements. The first one would be hisconscience's; the second one his party's.

He used to take an hour between two lines
A state burnt, but he said: India shines
It was a tough task
To be the mask
The poor old man often had to change his lines.