Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Dimitri Ehrlich, Shambhala Sun, May 1997.

 Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a soft-spoken man. Despite his ability to sing, without a microphone, in a voice of such power and grace that he is now South Asia’s most popular musician, in person his words tumble out in whispers, disappearing into his ample chest.
    The Pakistani singer is perhaps the world’s greatest living master of qawwali, a mystical Sufi music in which the voice coils upward like a snake being charmed out of a basket, raising listeners to a kind of spiritual ecstasy.
    Qawwali is among those forms of music in which religion and sex seem most closely intertwined: for while Khan’s lyrics are all based on Islamic law, his voice, accompanied by a party of tabla drummers and harmonium players, has a quavering orgasmic quality that drives listeners wild, causing them to shower the stage with money and dance in a manner that would be considered most unbecoming by the ayatollahs of this world.

“To be a qawwal is more than being a performer, more than being an artist,One must be willing to release one’s mind and soul from one’s body to achieve ecstasy through music. Qawwali is enlightenment itself.”

•Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on release of his biography,1992. Statement was included in the book

I have nothing but dust from the mazars where the beloved of Allah sleep.I transform this dust through my surs into my songs. A recreation , a perennial recitation of the Holy names of Allah, the Holy Prophet(PBUH) and Ali is my heritage. I will pass it on to the next generation. Perhaps Allah likes what I do and He has opened the gates of blessings on me.I love Him. I go far and wide with the name of my Beloved on my lips. To those who do not knowlanguage I chant Allah hoo, I sing of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and sing of Ali, the people are enchanted.I claim no skill, it is because of the great men of Allah, when I was awarded the Grand Prixin Paris Uxi Mufticame to me in thr green room and said that I possessed no skill for the honour and that it was because of saintsand blessings of Allah. He was right. what is man but a handful of dust and what canhe do?  Myself, I am nothing, If I am anything it is because of my companions. An axe cannot chop wood without its handle. I also cannot do anything without my companions and friends who work with me. They are as important as a thumb is in hand. The more honours I am given , the more afraid I become, that I might not slip inthe eyes of my fans. I pray to Allah to preserve me and keep me in his favour. I need his friendship . I do not bother about the disaffections of the times.  Naheed, my wife and Nida (my daughter) are the two rulers sitting on the throne of my heart. I travel long and wide to extend their empire. But I never forget them. In my heart are two portraits. Whenever I have an opportunity I bend and see them in my heart. The strings of my heart are in their hands. Farrukh and Rahat are my two eyes. I see the world through them. The world looks so beautiful. When these two eyes open it is daylight for me when the close ,the evening strats.  My father Ustaad Fateh Ali Khan, Ustad Mubarak Ali Khan and Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, his brothers are my spritual gurus. I am their son, their acolyte. It is my duty to preserve and protect the knowledge the music that they gave me. I do a lot of experiments but the base is classical music. i ambound with ragas. I may road around the world and may acquaint myself with the western instuments I never wander from the central point. from the stage of WOMAD and from the studios of Peter Gabriel, I always emerge depths of my own music.  The musical instuments may be western but my voice never wavers away from my own ragas. it is good to make experiments and I do a lot of them but my thoughts always round the centre and that centre is the tradition of my elders and it is classical music.. the tradition of my elders and it is classical music..

Jim Ankan Deka and Ritwika Bhattacharya, the musician duo from Bangalore released ‘Tere Bin Nahi Lagda’ online, a tribute to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

There aren’t enough words to surmise Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s contribution to the world of Sufi music nor his limitless musical genius. There’s certainly no way to replicate his six-octave vocal range or his meticulous compositions. “Tere Bin Nahi Ladga”, recently covered by Rittwika Bhattacharya and Jim Ankan Deka, is an interesting rendition of the virtuoso’s soulful melody.

Remembering Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on his 16th death anniversary Originally Authored By:

Adam Nayyar on Outlook

“I do not sing to become famous or wealthy. All praise is to God that I lack nothing. But, when I sing, it’s because I inherited this talent from my great heritage. I thank our ancestors many times, I only want to impart the message that they themselves imparted and be of service to you in making you aware of this message.”

—Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, 1948-1997

On August 16, 1997, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died and the world lost one of the most dynamic singers of the century. For six centuries, Nusrat’s family have performed qawwali music at royal courts and Sufi centres. Nusrat’s father insisted that he become a physician. But after mastering the tabla at the age of 16 and visualizing dreams of himself performing at the famous Khwaja Mo’in ud-din Chishti’s shrine in Ajmer, India, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan began a 33 year journey as the ‘mouthpiece for the divine’.

At the old Mehfil-e-Sama grounds in front of Data Darbar in Lahore (now covered with ugly concrete as part of the new Data Darbar complex), we used to go to the all-night qawwali sessions during the annual Urs. It was there in 1972 that I heard Nusrat for the first time, a year after his father’s death and was amazed by the virtuosity of this round young man. The energy, the passion, pushing the music to its limits with eyes squeezed shut, everything, the world would one day know him by, were already there. An enthusiastic Lahori crowd roared its approval, galvanizing the young qawwal to even more high-pitched and painfully powerful creations.

A couple of years later, as a homesick student in Germany during the 1970s, cassettes of Nusrat from the Rehmat Grammophone House in Faisalabad were all I asked for from home. It was Nusrat’s music that during those long years filled my little room with a power and freedom that made me proud of my identity. I still remember sophisticated Pakistanis turning up their noses at his music and saying, “Adam, do we really have to have this cacophony on so loud?" Yet they were the same ones, who ten years later used to ask me superciliously, “I’m sure you haven’t heard Nusrat’s latest. Isn’t he great?"

Dear NFAK Fans,

It fills my heart with tremendous pleasure to announce that your favorite and
undoubtedly the best Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s fan site ever … NusratForever.com
will be back online fully reloaded and redesigned.

We have scheduled the release of new site tentatively on 1st june 2012

However the archives of old site will be back online very soon , withing 2-3
days at max…

So Spread the word,

In 1995,Notable Author Paul Williams attended one Of Nusrat Saheb’s Concert, probably just because of curiosity….it was just that 4 hours first time experience which forced him to include the Mystero’s name in his 20th Century Greatest Hits Book….Recalling the concert as “The Celebration Of Life” he also claimed that Nusrat’s each and every concert diserverd a place in his book. Here is a small excerpt…..

This time I get to write about a concert I did attend. There can be no argument that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan (1948-1997) was one of the truly great singers of the 20th century in any form (opera, popular song, or qawwali) and in any language. Anyone who care about singing and who are aware of the history of this art form in the 20th century and who have ears to hear the available recordings would not deny Nusrat’s stature as a great man, great artist, exceptional musician. So it seems eminently reasonable, if one wishes to honor the performing arts, to place one well-executed example of his work in his chosen art form on a greatest-works-of-the-era list. And since it is not easy to determine whether in fact audio or audiovisual recordings of the performing arts can be considered the equivalent (for purposes of making aesthetic judgments) of actually being present at a dance performance or musical concert, it makes sense that the judgment of the singers’ live audiences (as individuals and collectively) must be considered by critics and commentators and curriculum committees identifying “great works.“So of course, what is really on my list is “a concert by Umm Kulthum,” “a concert by the Grateful Dead, “any concert by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.” Great hits of the era, indeed. But to mock the fact that critics and art historians must point to particular objects, specific paintings or novels or compositions, I chose for my list a few credible examples of concerts on specific dates by the aforementioned great artists. Concerts which you who are reading these words in another century surely wish you could have been present at. I apologize if I seem to be boasting of my good fortune–but it does seem appropriate to me that one of my selections be a concert I actually experienced directly as an audience member, someone standing or sitting before the performer in the actual time and space in which the work of art was created.Okay, in order not to get trapped in trying to justify this particular Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan concert as an especially memorable work of art, let me point to the obvious: It is memorable to those of us who were there because we were there, and this is the universal rule for the performing arts. And let me repeat and quote what I wrote about this concert back then, in my quarterly music newsletter,shortly after seeing and hearing (and being part of) it: