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. Sometimes 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.
Qawwali is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing, originating in the Indian subcontinent.
Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is a Pakistani Singer, primarily of Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music. Khan is one of the biggest 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 popular as a playback singer in Hindi cinema and the Pakistan film industry.
Kafi is a classical form of Sufi music mostly in the Siraiki, Punjabi and Sindhi languages and originating from the Punjab, and Sindh regions in the Indian subcontinent. Some well-known Kafi poets are Baba Farid, Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Sachal Sarmast and Khwaja Ghulam Farid. This poetry style has also lent itself to the Kafi genre of singing, popular throughout South Asia, especially Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Over the years, both Kafi poetry and its rendition have experienced rapid growth phases as various poets and vocalists added their own influences to the form, creating a rich and varied poetic form, yet through it all it remained centered on the dialogue between the Soul and the Creator, symbolized by the murid (disciple) and his Murshid (Master), and often by lover and his Beloved.
Fateh Ali Khan Jullundhri Qawwal was a classical singer and a qawwali musician in the 1940s and 1950s.
Badar Miandad Khan, also known as Badar Ali Khan, was a Pakistani qawwali singer. He released several albums in Pakistan. Several albums were also released under UK and Indian labels.
Headbanging is the action of violently shaking one's head in rhythm with music. It is common in the contemporary rock, punk and heavy metal music genres, where headbanging is often used by musicians on stage. Headbanging is also common in traditional Islamic Sufi music traditions such as Qawwali in the Indian subcontinent and Iran.
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.
Shahid Ali Khan is a Canada based singer in the Qawwali genre, a musical tradition that dates back over 700 years.
Dildar Hussain is a Pakistani percussionist and tabla player. He is known for being the left handed tabla player for late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a renowned Qawwali singer. Dildar Hussain played tabla for him in his qawwali-singing group until Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died in 1997. Dildar Hussain belongs to the Punjab gharana of tabla-playing music artists. He is a shagird of Ustad Allah Rakha. Dildar Hussain plays the tabla left-handed
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.
Chhaap Tilak Sab Chheeni, is a Ghazal written and composed by Amir Khusro, a 14th-century Sufi mystic, in popular Western Indian language Braj Bhasha. Due to the resonance of its melody and mystical lyrics, it is frequently heard in Qawwali concerts across Indian Subcontinent. Chaapp Tilak Sab Chheeni is considered as Amir Khusru‘s most known Kalam which is basically a penned version of his imagination of devotion and the joy of oneness with the eternal one. This poetry is an epic example where an inherent middle eastern art form gets entangled with the Indic philology, custom and art a unique twist between the two artforms. This kind of devotion is rarely seen in Islamic ghazals and qawwalis preceding it. This poetry is a great example of the role both cultures played to create this Ghazal and Qawwali which has a unique essence combining both Indic and Islamic culture which inherently created a new unique art form which contributed to the early beginnings of the Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb culture to be developed.
Aaj Rang Hai also known as Rang or Rung (transl. Color) is a Qawwali written by the 13th-century Sufi poet, Amir Khusrau in Hindavi and Braj Bhasha dialects. In the song, Khusrau describes to his mother his ecstasy upon finding his murshid in the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya. The song is a staple of most Qawwali sessions in North India and Pakistan, especially in the Chishti shrines of Delhi. It is traditionally sung as a closing piece at the end of a Qawwali session.
Dama Dam Mast Qalandar is a spiritual Sufi qawwali written in the honour of the most revered Sufi saint of Sindh, Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (1177–1274) of Sehwan Sharif.
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.
Fanna-Fi-Allah is a Canadian–American group which plays Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music popular in South Asia.
"Tumhe Dillagi" is a ghazal song written by lyricist Purnam Allahabadi and composed by prominent Sufi singer of Pakistan Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
