Nusrat_Fateh Ali Khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Urdu / Punjabi: Nusrat Fath Ali Khan), born Pervez Fateh Ali Khan (13 October 1948 - 16 August 1997), was a Pakistani vocalist, musician and music director primarily a singer of Qawwali, a form of Sufi Islamic devotional music. [1] Widely considered one of the greatest voices ever recorded, [2] he possessed an extraordinary range of vocal abilities and could perform at a high level of intensity for several hours [3] [4] [5] [6] He belonged to the Patiala gharana extending the 600-year-old Qawwali tradition of his family, Khan is widely credited with introducing Qawwali music to international audiences. [7] He is popularly known as "Shehnshah-e-Qawwali", meaning "The King of Kings of Qawwali". [8] Born in Faisalabad, Khan had his first public performance at the age of 15, at his father's chelum. He became the head of the family qawwali party in 1971. He was signed by Oriental Star Agencies, Birmingham, England in the early 1980s. Khan went on to release movie scores and albums in Europe, India, Japan, Pakistan and the U.S. He engaged in collaborations and experiments with Western artists, becoming a well-known world music artist. He toured extensively, performing in over 40 countries. [9] In addition to popularising Qawwali music, he also had a big impact on contemporary South Asian Asian popular music, including Pakistani pop, Indi-pop and Bollywood μυσης Early life and career Khan was born in Punjabi Muslim [14] [15] family in Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan, in 1948. His family originates from Basti Sheikh in Jalandhar. His ancestors learned music and singing there and adopted it as a profession. [16] He was the fifth child and first son of Fateh Ali Khan, a musicologist, vocalist, instrumentalist, and qawwal. Khan's family, which included four older sisters and a younger brother, Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan, grew up in central Faisalabad. The tradition of qawwali in the family had passed down through successive generations for almost 600 years. [17] Initially, his father did not want Khan to follow the family's vocation. He had his heart set on Nusrat choosing a much more respectable career path and becoming a doctor or engineer because he felt Qawwali artists had low social status. However, Khan showed such an aptitude for and interest in Qawwali, that his father finally relented. [18] The young man began by learning the tabla before moving on to vocals. [Citation needed] In 1964, Khan's father died, leaving his musical education under the supervision of his paternal uncles, Mubarak Ali Khan and Salamat Ali Khan. He is the uncle of singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat was known as Pervaiz until he visited Ghulam Ghaus Samdani who changed his name to Nusrat Fateh Ali. Samdani also told him that he would become a great singer. In 1971, after the death of his uncle Mubarak Ali Khan, Khan became the official leader of the family Qawwali party and the party became known as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Mujahid Mubarak Ali Khan & Party. Khan's first public performance as the leader of the Qawwali party was at a broadcast recording studio as part of an annual music festival organized by Radio Pakistan, known as Jashn-e-Baharan. Khan sang mainly in Urdu and Punjabi and occasionally in Persian, Braj Bhasha and Hindi. His first major hit in Pakistan was the song Haq Ali Ali, which was performed in a traditional style and with traditional instrumentation. The song featured restrained use of Khan's sargam improvisations. Later career In the summer of 1985, Khan performed at the World of Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD) festival in London. [20] He performed in Paris in 1985 and 1988. He first visited Japan in 1987, at the invitation of the Japan Foundation. He performed at the 5th Asian Traditional Performing Art Festival in Japan. [21] He also performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York in 1989, earning him admiration from the American audience. [22] Khan, throughout his career, had great understanding with many southern Asian singers such as Alam Lohar, Noor Jehan, A. R. Rahman, Asha Bhosle, Javed Akhtar, and the Lata Mangeshkar. In 1992 to 1993 academic year, Khan was a Visiting Artist in the Ethnomusicology department at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States. [23] In 1988, Khan teamed up with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ, which led to Khan being signed to Gabriel's Real World label. He would go on to release five albums of traditional Qawwali through Real World, along with the more experimental albums Mustt Mustt (1990), Night Song (1996), and the posthumous remix album Star Rise (1997). [24] Khan's experimental work for Real World, which featured his collaborations with Canadian guitarist Michael Brook, spurred on several further collaborations with a number of other Western composers and rock musicians. One of the most noticeable of these collaborations came in 1995, when Khan grouped with Pearl Jam's lead singer Eddie Vedder on two songs for the soundtrack