How Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan became a legend

After Fateh's [Fateh Ali Khan] death in 1964, the composition of the family group gradually evolved. Over the years, Mujahid Mubarak, Mubarak's [Mubarak Ali Khan] son, joined them, followed by Nusrat's younger brother, Farrukh, who was four years younger than him.

To start with, the group was called "Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Mujahid Mubarak Ali Khan & Party", confirming the importance of the second voice in the family group, just as before during their respective parents' time. However, Nusrat's panache slowly gained precedence and soon only his name was cited, although Mujahid Mubarak continued to perform with Nusrat until the end of the 1980s, when he left to form his own group.

Farrukh was a central figure in the group, with his incredible virtuosity on the harmonium and his brilliant contributions as the second or third vocalist. He had also inherited a wealth of family knowledge and we must acknowledge his vital collaboration in composing the musical arrangements for most of the musical themes, along with his brother.

As Nusrat rose to fame in his own right, another person - who had, in fact, been with them for a long time as Fateh's student and one of the chorus - was to play a determining role in the group and in the development of Nusrat's career. He was Iqbal Naqibi also known as Iqbal Kasuri, or "the man from Kasur", a town famous in the Indian subcontinent for being home to the shrine of the great Sufi poet, Bulleh Shah. Iqbal Naqibi had been close to Fateh and was older than Nusrat; he went on to become the latter's personal secretary and the manager of the group. A pithy, flamboyant character, he soon became the indispensable mediator, particularly during the international phase of the 1980s and 1990s, as he was the only one in the group who could speak English properly.

In the mid 1970s, the tabla player, Dildar Hussain joined the group, as an occasional member to start with, then later a permanent one. He also came from a long line of percussionists and was one of Iqbal Naqibi's cousins. From the time he joined the group onwards, he was Nusrat's faithful accompanist, playing with him for twenty long years, sharing and developing the essential rhythmic intimacy that they had established at the outset.

Now, the main members of Nusrat's group were in place and the rise of "Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party" could begin. The star was noticed almost immediately!

The anthropologist Adam Nayyar, who went on to become a close friend of Nusrat's, remembers the urs of Data Ganj Baksh in Lahore: "It was there, in 1972 that I heard Nusrat for the first time, and I was amazed by the virtuosity of this round young man. The energy, the passion, pushing the music to its limits with his eyes squeezed shut, everything the world would one day know him by, was already there. An enthusiastic Lahori crowd roared its approval, galvanizing the young qawwal to even more high-pitched and painfully powerful creations."

An important step in the process of Nusrat being recognised as a worthy successor to his father was the celebration of Amir Khusro's seven hundredth death anniversary, which the Pakistan National Council for the Arts organised in 1975. As the invention of qawwali, as we know it today, is yet another accomplishment attributed to this musical genius, most of the great qawwals, the Sabri brothers in particular, took part in this festival and presented the best of Amir Khusro's works.

As Nusrat and his party had received the invitation quite late, when they reached the festival, the other groups had already performed most of the best known and most loved poems from Amir Khusro's repertory, like those the Sabri brothers had sung. They were thus forced to present songs, poems and ragas rarely played by Pakistani artists, like the little known text, "Khusro main toh piya se naina mila aayi re (I have exchanged glances with my Beloved, Khusro)". This broad knowledge of the repertory, the musical and vocal inventions as well as the energy he exuded when he sang, won Nusrat the respect of the whole audience, including the celebrities who were present, like the famous poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. This was the beginning of Nusrat's rise to personal fame. Apart from his regular participation in the urs and the private invitations he received, Nusrat's fame also spread considerably through his large number of recordings.

It is, in fact, during this period, from the mid 1970s onwards, that his cassette recordings became extremely popular. They were practical to handle and cheaply available at stalls in all the bazaars.

In Faisalabad, the first company to produce cassettes was the historic Rehmat Gramophone House, and Nusrat owes a great deal of his early popularity to them. Nusrat was the second artist they produced and these initial releases were mainly recreations of his father's greatest hits, including the famous "Haq Ali Maula", interpreted in a deeply personal fashion by Nusrat. This track went on to become one of his most sought after traditional pieces. Nusrat had, in fact, sung it at Amir Khusro's anniversary the previous year, in 1975.

One of the secular places where Nusrat and most qawwals loved to perform was the famous Pilot Hotel in Lahore. This small establishment had the great advantage of being located very close to the shrine of the honoured Data Sahib (Ali Hujweri), one of Lahore's patron saints. His annual urs is certainly the most important in Punjab, along with those of Madho Lal Hussein and Baba Farid.

According to Yasser Nomann, a tireless promoter of Pakistani musicians, who has had the privilege of recording a number of them at the National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, Lok Virsa, "Qawwal parties gave the hotel a lot of business yearly, so the owner thought to give them back a portion of his profit as nazarana and he started holding limited mehfils of qawwali at Pilot Hotel's compound each year during the urs of Data Sahib."

Over the years, these mehfils increasingly became a regular event, as the friendship between Nusrat and the owner of the Pilot Hotel grew, and they gradually developed into an "off" festival, bringing together the best of the qawwali groups in comfortable listening conditions. Even today, the Pilot Hotel concerts are greatly appreciated by all the qawwals who perform at Data Sahib's urs.

The first invitation to perform outside Pakistan took Nusrat to the land of his ancestors, India. To Bombay, in fact, where the memory of the brothers Fateh and Mubarak Ali Khan was still very much alive.

In 1979, Raj Kapoor, the film director and actor, who had invited them to sing at his own wedding in 1958, prevailed upon the new generation, this time for his son Rishi's wedding. All the Bollywood stars were present, and although to start with, people came and went, not really listening, Nusrat's spirited creativity captured the general attention and left the audience speechless. Dildar Hussain, Nusrat's tabla player, remembers "We started at ten in the night and finished at seven in the morning. He sang 'Halka Halka Suroor' for two-and-a-half hours at a stretch!"

During this trip, Nusrat also wanted to visit Ajmer Sharif, to pay homage to the Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, and fulfil his adolescent dream. A rare event for a foreign qawwal, he was allowed to sing within the shrine compound. International recognition arrived very progressively through the Pakistani diaspora. In 1980, he was invited to England by Mohammed Ayub from Oriental Star Agencies, a production house and label established in 1966 in Birmingham, home to a large population of Indian and Pakistani immigrants.

Nusrat and his group gave a first series of concerts within the community circuits and they made a series of recordings too. This was a great success. From then on, Nusrat travelled very frequently to England, for tours targeting the diaspora and mainly organised, at least in the beginning, by Mohammed Ayub. At the time of Nusrat's death, Oriental Star Agencies had already published sixtyone CDs, about a hundred cassettes and twenty-two videos of Nusrat's concerts.

He was the undisputed star of their label. In the diaspora, as in Pakistan, Nusrat's audience was a multi-faith one, right from the beginning. Despite all the obstacles, the cultural proximity between the different religious communities from the Indian subcontinent was, and remains a reality for everyone, and on tour, large groups of Hindus or Sikhs attended his qawwali concerts. The tours organised for Nusrat by the diaspora could even include concerts in Sikh gurdwaras. There, he sang shabads, the mystical poems drawn from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib.

Despite all this, beyond the purely religious aspect of his performances, Nusrat's popularity amongst the diaspora was also due to the fact that, like his father, he sang the words of the great Punjabi Sufi poets like Bulleh Shah, Baba Farid or Shah Hussein. This brought him to the attention of a number of Punjabis (the large majority of Pakistani expatriates) who shared the same language and the same multi-faith cultural heritage.

The impact he had was even more pronounced as the 1970s and 1980s saw the assertion of a certain Punjabi cultural renaissance and Sufi poetry was an important aspect of the movement. Nusrat's fame spread amongst the diaspora and, from this time on, he began to extend his tours, which now took him to Norway, Sweden, Denmark or even to South Africa. A branch of the Sabriya Chishtya, with which his family was traditionally affiliated, first invited him to South Africa in 1983. Then came regular tours to the Emirates in the Persian Gulf, including Dubai, home to a large Pakistani community.

Despite all this, it was only through a growing recognition from Western audiences, acquired through his overall artistic development, that Nusrat attained the status of a living legend.