Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

India Uncut

Friday, January 27, 2006

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, 2 am

Thanx.
His latest song "Naina" from Omkara is fabulous.

Thanks for starting this thread. 😊 I like his songs-Jiya dhadak dhadak, Naina, Mann Ki Lagan.

By the time Rahat joined his uncle's troupe, in the mid-1980s, Nusrat was already a virtual legend in his own country. He was also a much criticised man, and the reasons for both the laudings and the lashings he received were the same: what he did with the form of the qawaali.

"Unhone ek guldasta banaaya," says Rahat. "Usme qawwali, thumri, ghazal, muktalif kism ki musical forms ko shaamil kiya." Nusrat made a bouquet of musical styles, but unlike what the purists say, he did not compromise while doing that. "Everthing he did retained the flavour of qawwali," says Rahat. The essence of his music, in other words, drew from the same spiritual yearning that marks out qawwali music.

One of the biggest gripes around Nusrat – and, indeed, against Rahat today – is that he demeaned qawwali music by taking it out of its original setting of dargahs and suchlike, and into marriage functions and Bollywood. I ask Rahat about that, about how one can reconcile the original intent of qawwali as a spiritual tool with its use today for entertainment.

"You can listen to every qawwali in two ways," he tells me. "When we sing of 'sharaab' and 'suroor', you can take the meaning to be either literal, or a metaphor for something spiritual. It depends on the person listening to it, not on the setting."

* * * * *


In 1985, Nusrat performed at a festival in Cornwall, and that is where the West sat up and took notice of him. As the years went by, collaborations, albums and concerts followed, most notably his remarkable series of albums with Real World.

"Did he adapt his music for Western Audiences?" I ask Rahat. "Was there a difference between the music he performed in Pakistan and that abroad?"

"There had to be," says Rahat. "The music he performed abroad had much more of classical content. Foreigners didn't understand our language and our lyrics, so the music had to work harder."

Also, if I may speculate, foreigners unused to classical music were likely to be far more impressed by meandering alaaps than local audiences, who had seen plenty of that stuff, and whose expectations from the music were often different. In other words, Nusrat perhaps played to his Western audiences a bit, gave them the exotica he craved – but always without compromising the essence of his music.

I ask Rahat about Star Rise, the Real World compilation of some of Nusrat's music remixed by stars of the Asian Underground. It's the only work featuring Nusrat's voice that I simply can't stand, and I ask Rahat what Nusrat thought of such remixes. Rahat laughs. "Nusrat hated it," he says. "He felt they had destroyed his music."

* * * * *

I ask him about his album, Rahat, which was produced by Rick Rubin and released by Sony in 2001. "Your voice sounds very different in that than it does in some of the stuff you've recently done," I say, "like 'Jiya Dhadak Dhadak'. Why is that?"

Rahat laughs. "Rick came to me and he said that he wanted to use these four tracks that I'd recorded in 1996. I told him that I've changed since then, I'm a different singer now. I offered to sing those same songs for him again today. But he insisted on using those songs, he said that that is how he wanted to project me."

"And how have you changed?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm much better now, I was so young then. [He was 23 in 1996.] I've learnt so much more, I can do a lot more with my voice now. Then, I couldn't pull off everything I could conceive."

"Can you do that now?"

"No. I'm not sure I ever will."

"Could Nusrat do it."

"Oh yes." Rahat smiles, remembering. "He could do anything."

* * * * *

Rahat has performed with Eddie Vedder at the Central park in New York, and with Pearl Jam at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where they performed "Long Road" together, the song from the soundtrack of Dead Man Walking, for which Nusrat had collaborated with Pearl Jam. Rahat had participated in the recording of that.

"The recording was in a small room, not the kind of big studio we had expected. And when these guys came, holding guitars, we thought they must be musicians. I was surprised when Eddie started singing while recording, I had thought till then he was just a musician, playing guitar."

"And how did you find his singing?" I ask.

"Oh, when he started singing, I couldn't make anything out, we all had headphones on. But later, when I heard the track, I was amazed. He sounded so good!"

There is fierce competition among qawwali singers, Rahat tells me, which comes through in the format of the performances.

"When a group performs," says Rahat, "it is understood that it doesn't get up as long as the audience wants it to go on. So if two groups are scheduled to perform on one night, the first one will try to make sure that it pleases the audience, so that the second one can't get on stage.

"So many times," he continues with a smile, "Khansaab would perform so well that the people scheduled to perform after him never got a chance to come on stage.

"It is like a muqabla."

Rahat isn't just a singer, an interpreter, but also a composer, a creator. "I compose around 30-40 songs every year," he tells me.

"Do you keep audiences in mind when you do this," I ask, "or do you just create the kind of music that makes you happy?"

"Oh, I have to keep audiences in mind," he says. "For example, if there is a fashion for Raga Bhairavi, I'll sit down with that and create songs in it."

After composing his music, Rahat tests them out among audiences. He gives between 20 to 25 live performances every month, and he plays his new songs at the concerts. "The ones which receive a good response stay in my repertoire," he says. "The others I just drop. One has to go down to the level of the audience."

"Can't you lift the audience to your level?" I ask.

"No," he says.

Just before I leave I ask him if he would have been such an accomplished musician if he wasn't from this family.

"No," he says emphatically. "I would have been just another ordinary singer."

Word Count: 1

Prince of Qawwalis

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan JAN 10 - With the flowing mystic tunes of traditional Qawwali music, you travel back to a decade ago. Encompassing these traditional sounds is an energetic contemporary aura, musician Rahat Fateh Ali Khan believes that music needs to have a subtle blend of conventional as well as modern day melodies. Nephew to one of the most revered Qawwals - Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat proudly states that his uncle is his idol and is responsible for all that he has learnt. "Khan saab was a guru as well as a friend. When we did our riyaz together, he was nothing but a musician. But at other times he was the most jovial person I have known," says Rahat. Trained under Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan since he was seven, Rahat was the Ustad's conscious choice to carry forward his musical tradition. "I am very lucky that I got an opportunity to grow with his music. Although I might need to amend my music a little considering contemporary choices, my roots will always remain the same," he asserts. Despite his proud inheritance, one is hardly surprised with the humility with which Rahat lets us comprehend his musical philosophies. "Love is the definition of my music because only love can eradicate the vengeance that exists in the world today. " With his latest venture 'Jiya Dhadak Dhadak' topping music charts in India, Rahat claims that certain traditional sounds are always predominant with Pakistani music lovers, whereas India is much more receptive to newer sounds. "A lot of people in Pakistan are more familiar to ghazals in darbars and therefore expect more of such music," he informs. Ask him about Pakistani artists like Strings and Junoon trying to create a space within the Indian industry and he says, "It is going to be a tough journey for everyone." Amongst the few artists with major international acts to his credit, Rahat has given vocals to Shekhar Kapur's version of the Victorian adventure epic 'The Four Feathers' with composer James Cornor. Rahat will be in Mumbai for a live performance on Jan 15 for Channel V's Big [V] concert, as well as for the promotion of his newest album 'Charkha'.

Originally posted by: charades

Dada....Thanks. 😕

Thanks Vijay did the correction also can you post the link for Jiya Dhadak Dhadak Jaaye song. Thanks a lot Bro.

Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

(American) by Michael Stone
When he died in 1997, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was the foremost exponent of Pakistani devotional Qawwali music, rooted in the 700-year tradition of Persian Samah religious song, as perpetuated by Sufi devotees of the Prophet Mohammed. Listeners who saw Dead Man Walking will immediately recognize the evocative Qawwali sound from Nusrat's sparkling contribution to the film soundtrack. Following Qawwali tradition, Nusrat chose as his musical apprentice his nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, when he was still a youth. Rahat trained at his uncle's feet, joined his entourage and sang at his side. He received the master's mantle upon his uncle's death, and at his behest, assumed direction of his uncle's ensemble. This album is Rahat's self-titled debut, superbly produced by American Recordings. A sinuous vocal artistry resides at the heart of Qawwali tradition, in which vocal call-and-response plays a critical role in building the music's compelling emotional tension. Instrumental accompaniment comprises dramatic tabla hand percussion and handclapping, and the unique sonorities of the harmonium, a keyboard instrument powered by a hand-pumped bellows. (Allen Ginsberg followers will recognize the instrument and its organ-like sound from the poet's harmonium use in his poetry readings.)

As a devotional form Qawwali seeks to inspire and elevate listener and performer alike, inducing a sense of inner peace and ecstatic spiritual rapture. Revealing himself as a worthy successor to his uncle, Rahat performs four extended songs on the album, the shortest exceeding 12 minutes in length. This is unequivocally music for reflection and meditation. Rahat's invocations cultivate a soothing, hypnotic quality, and while the tabla often surges to the fore, the accomplished instrumental array ornaments and enhances without ever overpowering the stunning vocal solo and ensemble performance. The interlocking voices weave and wail, swoop and soothe in perfect cadence, borne ever higher upon a robust rhythmic and melodic underpinning. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is a singer of powerful intonation and imaginative projection whose every vocal nuance constitutes a piercing cry from the soul by an emergent master.