Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Biography, Discography & Albums

Biography

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party occupies the foremost position among all qawwals. The designation “Party” serves as a standard label for any qawwali ensemble, yet it surfaces equally in Sikh practice and among select classical troupes, such as those assembled by shehnai master Bismillah Khan. Crowned Shahen-Shah-e-Qawwali—the Brightest Star in Qawwali—he entered the world on October 13, 1948, in Lyallpur inside Pakistan’s Punjab Province.

His debut sessions occurred on Pakistani soil in 1973, after which several early EMI (Pakistan) issues appeared under a joint credit with his uncle Mubarak Ali Khan. Because those cassette editions carried neither dates nor reliable documentation and circulated in vast quantities, any ordering finer than catalog-number sequence remains elusive. Between 1973 and 1993 his discography expanded at an extraordinary pace, exceeding fifty titles on Pakistani, British, American, European, and Japanese imprints. The sheer volume of releases, many of them poppy remixes or treatments fitted with Western instrumentation and settings, produced a thicket of recordings that readily ensnared newcomers and extracted their funds.

Even seasoned listeners confront obstacles: occasional titles such as Volume 4 Punjabi (Oriental Star CD SR013) from 1990 or Ghazals Urdu (Oriental Star CD SR055) from 1992 offer hints, yet the chosen language and stylistic mode frequently stay indeterminate. The Western catalog already overflows with his work; the Indian market is supersaturated, and the cumulative mass threatens to erode discrimination altogether.

Real World bore primary responsibility for carrying Khan beyond Indian audiences, its promotional strategy and the WOMAD platform supplying the decisive introduction. Mustt Mustt (Real World CD RW 15), issued in 1990, deliberately courted non-traditional listeners through its unorthodox arrangements. “All these albums are experiments,” he told me in 1993. “There are some people who do not understand at all but just like my voice. I add new lyrics and modern instruments to attract the audience. This has been very successful.” That very success, however, encouraged disregard for the music’s inherent strengths. Remix projects and discs aimed at Western or youthful buyers continue to dismay many devotees, leaving the injunction “buyer beware” firmly in place. When he returns to his traditional repertoire his preeminence is undisputed, although admirers still lament the dilution introduced by those experiments.

In 1994, reportedly exasperated by unauthorized editions, he tightened his grip on business affairs together with concert and recording engagements. At the summit of his international standing, Khan died on August 16, 1997; an apparently unending sequence of posthumous releases followed in subsequent years.