Nusrat Fateh Ali Khanਨੁਸਰਤ ਫ਼ਤਿਹ ਅਲੀ ਖ਼ਾਨ

Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (13 October 1948 to 16 August 1997) was a Pakistani Punjabi singer from Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, who is widely regarded as the greatest performer of qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis. Known as the Shahenshah of qawwali, the emperor of the form, he carried songs that belonged in shrines and private mehfils onto concert stages in more than 40 countries, and listeners who understood no Urdu or Punjabi still followed the voice.

Early life in Faisalabad, with roots in Jalandhar

Nusrat was born in Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, in West Punjab, into a Punjabi Muslim family of qawwals. His family belonged to Jalandhar, in what is now Indian Punjab, where his ancestors had learned music and taken it up as a profession, and the family tradition of qawwali is said to reach back almost 600 years. He was the fifth child and first son of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, a musicologist, vocalist and qawwal, and he grew up in central Faisalabad with four older sisters and a younger brother, Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan, who later played harmonium beside him for many years.

His father at first wanted a different life for him. Qawwals held low social status, and Fateh Ali Khan hoped his son would become a doctor or an engineer. The boy kept listening instead, first joining his father's party as a tabla player and learning singing at the edges of the lessons given to others. His aptitude was plain enough that his father relented, a change helped, family accounts say, by praise for the young tabla player from visiting classical singers.

Learning qawwali after his father died

Fateh Ali Khan died in 1964. Britannica records that Nusrat sang at his father's funeral that year and gave his first public performance as a qawwal in 1966, singing with his uncles Mubarak Ali Khan and Salamat Ali Khan, both famous qawwals in the classical form. One early public performance as leader of the family group came in March 1965, at a Radio Pakistan studio recording for the Jashn-e-Baharan festival. When Mubarak Ali Khan died in 1971, Nusrat became head of the family qawwali party, which in time was billed simply as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party.

He studied the recordings of his father and uncles and built his own style on them: singing powerfully in a very high register, a family trademark, with remarkable stamina and melodic invention, usually backed by tabla, harmoniums and a chorus. His early hits in Pakistan included the Punjabi qawwali Ni Main Jana Jogi De Naal, with words by the Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, and Haq Ali Ali, which used his sargam improvisations sparingly. Faisalabad's Rehmat Gramophone Company released his first cassette in 1973, and in 1979 he became the first qawwal invited to sing at the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer.

How did Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan change qawwali?

He changed qawwali by quickening it and opening it out, without dropping its devotional core. Britannica notes that as he matured he increased the tempo and adjusted his style so the music reached contemporary and international listeners at a new level of intensity. Long improvisations stayed, but the performances were shaped so a listener hearing qawwali for the first time, in London or New York, could feel the build of a song even without following every word. That balance, shrine music that could also hold a concert hall, is the change later qawwals inherited.

World stages, films and collaborations

Signed in the early 1980s by Oriental Star Agencies in Birmingham, he performed at the WOMAD festival in London in 1985, sang in Paris the same year, and in 1987 performed in Japan at the invitation of the Japan Foundation. He first toured the United States in 1989, appearing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and in the 1992 to 1993 academic year he was a visiting artist in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Peter Gabriel promoted him through WOMAD and Real World Records, which released five albums of traditional qawwali alongside the experimental Mustt Mustt (1990) and Night Song (1996), both made with Canadian guitarist Michael Brook, and the posthumous remix album Star Rise (1997). A Massive Attack remix of the Mustt Mustt title track took his voice into British clubs and radio. His voice entered films early: he collaborated with Gabriel on the soundtrack of The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), sang for Natural Born Killers (1994), and recorded two songs with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam for Dead Man Walking (1995). In India he worked with lyricist Javed Akhtar on the album Sangam and the film Aur Pyar Ho Gaya, and sang Gurus of Peace with A. R. Rahman on Vande Mataram (1997), released days before his death. He also composed for Pakistani films and, shortly before he died, for Bollywood films whose songs were released after him.

Honours and later life

Honours followed the recordings. Pakistan gave him the President's Award for Pride of Performance in 1987. He received the UNESCO Music Prize in 1995, and in 1996 both the Grand Prix des Ameriques at the Montreal World Film Festival, for contribution to cinema, and the Arts and Culture Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes in Japan, where he was remembered as the Singing Buddha. In 1997 his albums Intoxicated Spirit and Night Song were nominated for Grammy Awards, for Best Traditional Folk Album and Best World Music Album, and the Hafiz Ali Khan Award recognised his standing in Hindustani classical music. He had been ill for some months when he travelled to London for treatment for liver and kidney problems in August 1997. He died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the Cromwell Hospital on 16 August 1997, aged 48. His body was taken back to Faisalabad, where his funeral was a public affair.

What is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan best known for?

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is best known as the defining qawwali singer of his generation, for performances such as Mast Mast and Dam Mast Qalandar, and for introducing qawwali to international audiences across more than 40 countries. Frontline counted more than 150 albums in his lifetime, and Guinness later listed him for the most qawwali recordings, with over 125 albums. Time named him among its Asian heroes in 2006, NPR included him in its 50 Great Voices in 2010, and Rolling Stone placed him on its 200 Greatest Singers of All Time list in 2023.

Legacy

His musical legacy is carried by his nephews. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, whom Nusrat had groomed as a successor, leads the family tradition in concerts and film songs across South Asia and the diaspora, and the duo Rizwan-Muazzam, also his nephews, perform the family qawwali as a party. Beyond the family, his phrasing reshaped Pakistani pop, Indian film music and the way world audiences hear Sufi poetry sung. For Punjabi listeners on both sides of the border, and in Faisalabad and Jalandhar alike, he remains the voice that made qawwali belong to everyone who stopped to listen.