Night Song is a collaborative studio album by Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Canadian ambient musician, guitarist and producer Michael Brook. Recorded in 1995 and released in 1996 on Real World Records, it was Khan's last album released on the label during his lifetime. Khan and Brook had previously collaborated for Mustt Mustt (1990), a critically acclaimed world fusion album said to have led Pakistani youth to discover Sufi religious music. The two had not worked for some time but collaborated again for a new album in 1995, naming the album Night Song. The album was produced by Brook, who developed an innovative but difficult production process for the album. Khan recorded improvisations for the album, and Brook had to decide which sections, some of which were an hour long, were the best and how they were going to fit together, without having a structural point of reference to start with or aim towards. He had components recorded on multi-track tapes, and created each track part by part, overdubbing his instrumentation atop of it, a manual process that predated easy forms of digital editing.
The album is considered a world fusion album, combining Khan's qawwali vocals with Brook's ambient production, and is often considered to be one of Khan's most experimental albums, featuring contributions from Senegalese and classically trained musicians. The songs on the album were written collaboratively between the duo.[1] The album contains down-to-earth lyrics about relationships and spiritual cleanliness, although Consumable Online noted that, despite this, “the two artists make an obvious, pronounced effort to lead one down a path of pure spiritual ecstasy.”[1] Upon its February 1996,[2] it charted at number 4 on the BillboardTop World Music Albums chart and number 65 on the UK Album Chart, and was critically acclaimed, with one review declaring it “a most intoxicating spiritually uplifting cross-cultural expression,”[3] and another calling it "elegant and entrancing."[3] The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album in 1997, but lost out to The Chieftains’ album Santiago. Several months earlier, Mojo had named it the 21st best album of 1996 in their year-end “Albums of the Year” list.[4] Songs from this album and Mustt Mustt were remixed for the pair's dubtronica-orientated remix album Star Rise, released in 1997.
Background
In 1989, English rock and world musician Peter Gabriel suggested to qawwali star Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and ambient musician and guitarist Michael Brook that they record a collaborative album together for Gabriel's recently established world music label Real World Records.[5] The duo subsequently recorded Mustt Mustt (1990), a world fusion album credited only to Khan that features Khan's qawwali vocals with keyboard work from Brook. Considered a "secularized" or "Western" version of Khan's other Qawwali albums,[6][7] it was critically acclaimed internationally and has been credited with leading Pakistani youth to discover Sufi religious music, qawwali.[8] It was subsequently named one of the Top 100 albums of the 1990s by American music magazine Alternative Press,[6] and reached number 14 on the BillboardTop World Music Albums chart in 1991.[9] David Lynch of The Austin Chronicle called the album a "seminal fusion".[10] British musician Nitin Sawhney said that it "changed the face of British music forever".[11]
The album was originally intended to be a one-off collaboration, and the pair subsequently worked on separate projects. Khan released a string of over ten more traditional solo albums, including The Day, the Night, the Dawn, the Dusk (1991),[12] the unanimously acclaimed Devotional Songs (1992)[13] and The Last Prophet (1994), the latter two albums also released on Real World Records.[14] Brook, meanwhile, released the acclaimed Cobalt Blue (1992) on 4AD Records,[15] and toured with Robert Fripp in 1993, resulting in the release of the tour's live album Damage: Live in 1994 on Virgin Records. However, Khan and Brook chose to reunite in 1994 for another album for Real World Records. Naming the album Night Song, work began in 1994. Part of the album was reportedly recorded in Real World's Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire.
The album was produced by Brook, who chose to work in a new method, after discovering that, during the recording of Mustt Mustt, Khan soars to his greatest heights when he has ample time to improvise, which frustrated Brook because the backing tracks he had created were "on the short side."[16] He worked in a method which saw Khan record vocal improvisations onto multitrack tapes which Brook would subsequently add to and layer, part by part, in the style of remixing; unlike the typical method of remixers building their mixes out of recorded parts that had already been carefully selected and edited by the original artist, for Night Song, Brook had to decide which sections out of Khan's improvisations, some of which were an hour long, were the best and how they were going to fit together, without having a structural point of reference to start with or aim towards.[16]Sound on Sound acknowledged that it involved "a gigantic editing challenge, and the risk of not seeing the wood for the trees anymore."[16]
It was not possible to have Khan and the Western musicians in the room at the same time due to logistical reasons, so Brook improvised bedtracks with guitarist Robert Ahwai, percussionist James Pinker and Brook himself on infinite guitar, bass, keyboards and drum programming.[16] He selected what he considered to be the best parts of these 24-track analogue recordings, and sampled and looped them on a Roland S770, triggered from his Atari/Notator sequencing system. These loops were then mixed to two tracks of another 24-track reel.[16] A 24-track reel has a running time of 28 minutes, which meant that Brook had 21 tracks, with one having been sacrificed to SMPTE code, and each 28 minutes long, available for overdubs.[16] Khan improvised three or four takes to each of the nine tracks, resulting in many hours of unedited material.[16]
Brook encountered another problem; whilst the two-track mixdown of looped backing track sounded too "loopy", the original bedtracks of Brook, Ahwai and Pinker sounded too rough and inconsistent to really work well with the vocals.[16] Transferring sections of the vocals to the bedtrack 24-track did not work for that reason, so Brook decided to sample sections of the original bedtracks and transfer them to the 24-track vocal reel, and then overdub other instruments onto that.[16] However, this was a problem because Brook had no idea what structure he was working towards.[16] Brook said that "the best bits of the vocals were spread out all over the tape, and it was very hard to hear things in context or in proper sequence."[16] What they then did was transfer sections of what they called the original master to the vocal master, and then do a mock-up, synchronised mix to DAT of the different sections that they liked, stopping the DAT every time they moved to the next section.[16] They would then listen to the DAT mix to see if things worked in sequence.[16] Brook noted that "it was a very slow process, because you could never let the multitrack tape run and say: “oh, this sounds good”, or “that transition doesn’t sound right.”[16]
“If we’d had a 24-track Fairlight it would have been alright, but there was no budget for that. Even using a few ADATs, where you can slip and slide tracks, and bounce between them, would have been much better. Having a single 24-track most of the time was very frustrating. Working with this montage-type approach meant that everything took forever.”
However, because Brook had to "do everything" with the S770 sampler, and did not have a hard disk editor available, it was a "made even slower."[16] In order to hear whether something worked or not, he had had to load it into the S770 sampler, copy it onto tape, "maybe do this for five or six tracks more" and then create the rough DAT mix to listen to the result. As a result, it would take them half a day to be able to listen to something, whereas the same edit would have taken two minutes in a 24-track Fairlight.[16] Brook noted, commenting on the overall sessions, that he "cannot imagine a more laborious way of making a record."[16]Sound on Sound considered the sessions a "technological nightmare".[16] However, on one occasion during recording, after a particularly long period of "laborious editing, sampling, and shifting things around in MIDI sequences", several musicians from Baba Maal’s band arrived at the studio to record some overdubs for them. Brook said that "it was amazing how that instantly lifted our spirits. When you get so bogged down in the details, you quickly lose the mood."[16]
Music and lyrics
The opening song "My Heart, My Life" features a kora.
Night Song is considered a world fusion album that combines Nusrat's Qawwali vocals with Brook’s electronic ambient music.[1] It is sometimes considered Khan's most experimental album, partly due to featuring Senegalese and classically trained musicians. Billboard said the album “disregarded genre”.[3]The New York Times considered it "special, moody music",[3] whilst Time Out considered it an ambient album.[3] Banning Eyre of Allmusic said that the album “helped establish something of a tradition for Real World crossover projects. The genre features dreamy, atmospheric keyboards and guitars, simple, mid-tempo rhythms, and a kind of low-key understatement.”[8]Consumable Online said that "the mood of Night Song swings rapidly from track to track."[1] They also drew "certain parallels" between the album and many of ambient pioneer Brian Eno’s works and productions, noting that Brook has done extensive work with Eno in the past.[1] They also noted that parallels could be drawn with the music of Brook's 4AD labelmates Lisa Gerrard and Dead Can Dance, who they noted also sometimes "fuse traditional foreign (or pseudo-foreign) vocals and rhythm with modern ambient music and, on occasion, technological sound," saying that this makes traditional music somewhat more accessible to the listener while adding diversity to the elements of ambient.[1]
Unlike Mustt Mustt, whose songs were the product of the pair's separated efforts, the songs on Night Song were written collaboratively.[1] The album contains down-to-earth lyrics about relationships and spiritual cleanliness, although Consumable Online noted that, despite this, "the two artists make an obvious, pronounced effort to lead one down a path of pure spiritual ecstasy."[1] The opening song "My Heart, My Life" features West Africankora and electronic backing, with Nusrat singing in a relaxed mid-range voice.[8] The song was compared to a Salif Keita ballad as it works up to its "energized" closing chant.[8] Eyre said that "My Comfort Remains" and "Crest" are "essentially pop numbers with catchy melodies, the former bouncy but static, the latter building towards a revelatory crescendo."[8] The fifth track, "Longing", features Nusrat's signature scat singing and his singular wail, "unmistakable even when lavished with effects."[8]Consumable Online said that the song is "a slow ballad beginning with a slide guitar's sweet melody and ending with strangled pleas (In English, "my dear longing for you is killing me.")"[1] "Sweet Pain" begins "deep in dream space with a wandering bassline and a simple backbeat, and then heating up to powerful close with Nusrat delivering spitfire scat."[8] "Lament" is "plodding, desolate and dark," with Nusrat droning "without you there is gloominess–come back home sweetheart" as mellow background guitar sounds "soar."[1] "Intoxicated" is a more upbeat than "Lament", and features "unexpected outbursts of Nusrat's rapid-fire, metaphorical vocals about obsession."[1]
The album was released on 20 February 1996 by Peter Gabriel’s world music label Real World Records. Considered a commercial success for a world album, it reached number 4 on the United States BillboardTop World Music Albums chart[2] and number 65 in the UK Albums Chart,[21] where it charted for one week.[22] The album was acclaimed by critics. Banning Eyre of AllMusic stated that “wherever you stand on Real World's arty aesthetics, you have to admire the Qawwali star's sense of adventure here.”[8]Consumable Online said that “Night Song makes a great companion to either sudden revelation or a simple evening in the forest, under the stars,” commenting that "it is certainly one of the best collaborative albums of the year."[1]The Guardian said it was “a quite sensational slow-burner of an album...Nusrat’s incredible vocal control and gift for wending his way round an evocative melody is bolstered by Brook’s sensitive ambient, gently beat-based arrangements. No-one deserves the extra exposure more than this peerless singer.”[3]Time Out called it "the best world music album...ever!"[20]
Billboard called it “an album for the ages, solidifying Khan’s stature as one of the world’s pre-eminent singers.”[3]Time Out said “the world’s best singer has a gag put in his mouth and delivers an ambient album that couldn’t be smoother if it was silk.”[3]The Daily Telegraph said that "this collaboration with Michael Brook and his guitars provides the most natural complement to Nusrat’s harmonium-tabla drums formula, yet never overshadows the mystical power of his voice,"[23] whilst Folk Roots said that "this is a truly great record. Michael Brook is an unmistakably original producer who knows how to put a great vocal instrument into a stunning new context. This is a truly great record,"[3] and The Los Angeles View said that "this collaboration demonstrates a distinct stroke of genius, a most intoxicating spiritually uplifting cross-cultural expression."[24]Keyboard Connections called it “a unique combination of intricate East-meets-West. Guitar, sampled drumbeats, and rhythmic vocals the like of which you’ve never heard before. Night Song presents an incomparable voice in a challenging setting.”[3] Bhasker Gupta of All About Jazz retrospectively said, along with Mustt Mustt, “these are two very important albums — insistent yet melancholic, sacrilegious for purists, innovative for radicals — with Khan at his adventurous best.”[18]
The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best World Music Album at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards in 1997,[25] but lost out to The Chieftains' album Santiago.[26] In December 1996, Billboard ranked it at number 15 in their list of the "Top World Music Albums" of 1996.[27]Mojo magazine ranked it at number 21 in their list of the top 40 albums of 1996.[4] Eyre also noted that the album was also influential on Real World Records, helping "establish something of a tradition" for the label's crossover projects, due to the "dreamy, atmospheric keyboards and guitars, simple, mid-tempo rhythms, and a kind of low-key understatement" to the album.[8] In 1997, Real World Records released a remix album of the duo's work, Star Rise, which featured five tracks from Night Song and four tracks from Mustt Mustt remixed by several prominent dubtronica musicians.[28] The remix of "Sweet Pain" from the album was released as a twelve-inch single by Virgin Records in 1997 to promote the album.[29] Real World Records re-released Night Song with slightly modified artwork on 4 May 2015 as part of their "Real World Gold" series,[30] a series which "peels back the years to revisit and re-evaluate some most inspirational and beautiful music from the archives" of Real World Records."[31] The label said that, "as the name suggests, it's a programme of reissues that brings some of the key Real World releases back into the sunlight as many titles have been unavailable for a number of years."[31]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook
Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was a Pakistani singer, songwriter, and music director. He was primarily a singer of qawwali — a form of Sufi devotional music. Often called the "Shahenshah-e-Qawwali", he is considered by The New York Times to be the greatest qawwali singer of his generation. He was described as the fourth greatest singer of all time by LA Weekly in 2016. He was known for his vocal abilities and could perform at a high level of intensity for several hours. Khan is widely credited with introducing qawwali music to international audiences. He was also a master in Hindustani classical music.
The Music of Pakistan includes diverse elements ranging from music from various parts of South Asia as well as Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and modern-day Western popular music influences. With these multiple influences, a distinctive Pakistani music has emerged.
Passion is an album released in 1989 by the English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel. It was the first Peter Gabriel album to be released on Real World Records. It is his second soundtrack and eighth album overall. It was originally composed as the soundtrack album for the film The Last Temptation of Christ, but Gabriel spent several months after the film's release further developing the music, finally releasing it as a full-fledged album instead of a movie soundtrack. It is seen as a landmark in the popularisation of world music, and won a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album in 1990. It was remastered with most of Gabriel's catalogue in 2002.
Qawwali is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing originating in South Asia. Originally performed at Sufi shrines or dargahs throughout South Asia, it is famous throughout Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and has also gained mainstream popularity and an international audience as of the late 20th century.
Real World Records is a British record label specializing in world music. It was founded in 1989 by English musician Peter Gabriel and original members of WOMAD. A majority of the works released on Real World Records feature music recorded at Real World Studios, in Box, Wiltshire, England.
Michael Brook is a Canadian guitarist, inventor, music producer, and film music composer. He plays in many genres, including rock, electronica, world music, minimalism and film scores. His collaborations with musicians around the world have made him "one of the most sought-after producers in the music industry." Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Brook lives in Los Angeles. He is the creator of the Infinite Guitar.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is a Pakistani singer, primarily Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music. Khan is one of the most popular and highest paid singers in Pakistan. He is the nephew of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, son of Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan and grandson of Qawwali singer Fateh Ali Khan. In addition to Qawwali, he also performs ghazals and other light music. He is also well-known as a playback singer in Hindi cinema and the Pakistan film industry.
Fateh Ali Khan Jullundhri Qawwal was a classical singer and a qawwali musician in the 1940s and 1950s.
Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan was a Pakistani musician, who played the harmonium in Qawwali music. He was also a member of a well-known family of Qawwali musicians, the Qawwal Bacchon gharana, he was the younger brother of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the son of Fateh Ali Khan, the nephew of Mubarak Ali Khan, and the father of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.
"Who You Are" is a song by American rock band Pearl Jam. Featuring lyrics written by vocalist Eddie Vedder and music co-written by drummer Jack Irons and guitarist Stone Gossard, "Who You Are" was released on July 30, 1996, as the first single from the band's fourth studio album, No Code (1996). The song topped the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and the Canadian Alternative 30 chart. It also peaked at number 31 on the Billboard Hot 100, number two on the UK Rock Chart, and reached the top 10 in Australia, Canada, Norway, and Finland—where the song reached number two and became the band's highest-charting single.
Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali is a Pakistani Qawwali group, headed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's nephews, Rizwan and Muazzam. They have performed at several editions of WOMAD since 1998, and have recorded several albums.
Filmi qawwali is a form of qawwali music found in the Lollywood, Dhallywood, Tollywood, and Bollywood film industries.
Mustt Mustt is the first Qawwali fusion album collaboration between singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and guitarist and producer Michael Brook, although the album itself is credited purely to Khan. It was rock musician Peter Gabriel who suggested that Brook and Khan work together. It was released in 1990 on Gabriel's Real World Records label.
Star Rise is a remix from two previous Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan–Michael Brook collaborations. The album was dedicated to the memory of Khan, who died prior to the album's completion, and released posthumously by Real World Records.
Daniele Gaudi, better known simply as Gaudi, is an Anglo-Italian musician, solo artist and record producer based in London, who specialises in dub music, electronica, reggae and worldbeat. His distinctive production sound appears in a number of albums nominated for Awards and prizes such as Grammy Award 2019 -Best Reggae Album Of The Year- for Mass Manipulation by Steel Pulse and BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music 2008 for the album Dub Qawwali by Gaudi & Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. His music works and contributions have topped international charts such as: Billboard Reggae Chart no.1 with the album Heavy Rain by Lee "Scratch" Perry, Billboard Reggae Chart no.1 with the album Mass Manipulation by Steel Pulse, Billboard Reggae Chart no.1 with the album Vessel of Love by Hollie Cook, Billboard Reggae Chart no.2 with "Rainford" by Lee "Scratch" Perry, UK Dance Chart no.1 with of "Jus' Come ".
Most of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's early music was recorded with Rehmat Gramophone House later turned RGH Label. Throughout the ’70s and early ’80s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan released hundreds of cassettes, most of them containing one or two lengthy songs. Chris Nickson, of Global Rhythm, argues that trying to make order of Khan's entire discography would be a nightmare.
The Day, the Night, the Dawn, the Dusk is an album by the Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, released in 1991.
"Tumhe Dillagi" is a ghazal song written by lyricist Purnam Allahabadi and composed by prominent Sufi singer of Pakistan Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Intoxicated Spirit is a live album by the Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, released in 1996. He is credited with his troupe, Party. Khan supported the album with a North American tour.
Shahzaman Ali Khan is a Pakistani singer from Faisalabad, Pakistan. He is the son of the popular Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Shahzaman is also the grandson of Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan, and grandnephew of the "Shahenshah-e-Qawwali ", Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Shahzaman primarily performs Qawwali, but also performs classical music alongside his father. Shahzaman's vocals and style of singing has been greatly compared to his granduncle's, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with him sometimes being referred to as "Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 2.0".
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