The maestro and his divine intonations

Khan’s first public performance was at a studio recording as part of an annual music festival organised by Radio Pakistan, known as Jashn-e-Baharan.

Khan sang mainly in Punjabi and occasionally in Persian, Brij bhasha and Hindi in his early years. However, after his collaboration with Peter Gabriel, when he became immensely popular among urban areas of South Asia and fans of World Music, he increasingly started singing in Urdu.

Khan brought to the world audience Qawwali, a form of music performed at the shrines of the Sufis of South Asia for centuries. Qawwali has a system of progression of its own when it is performed with an intricate link to rituals which help transform the experience of listeners.

Listen to the song composed and sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for the film Bandit Queen:

The San Francisco label Six Degrees, that released the Qawwali legend’s dub-laced collaboration with London producer-composer Gaudi in 2007, says of the legend,

Dubbed by many as the “Elvis of the East” and the “Bob Marley of Pakistan” these titles are not without foundation. Some have claimed he has sold more albums than Elvis, and he has reached as many hearts and souls and crossed as many cultural and spiritual boarders as Bob Marley with his unique mix of poetic eastern spiritual and western musical themes.

Khan was one of the rare performers of an ancient musical tradition refined with delicate elements of generations of Qawwals through centuries. Taking the universality of its devotional appeal, he fused it into a style that was flexible enough to be adopted by an international audience.

Watch Farjad Nabi's award winning film 'Nusrat has Left the Building...But When?':

He teamed with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack to ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ in 1985, and with Canadian musician Michael Brook on the albums 'Mustt Mustt' (1990) and 'Night Song' (1996) and with Pearl Jam lead singer, Eddie Vedder in 1995 on two songs for the soundtrack to Dead Man Walking.

Peter Gabriel said at the time of Nusrat’s passing:

I have never heard so much spirit in a voice. Nusrat was a supreme example of how far and deep a voice can go in finding, touching and moving the soul.

Khan also contributed to the soundtrack of 'Natural Born Killers'. And his album ‘Intoxicated Spirit’ was nominated for a Grammy award in 1997 for best traditional folk album.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan holds the world record for the largest recorded output by a Qawwali artist-a total of 125 albums as of 2001.

Nusrat Fateh Ali dominated the Qawwali scene across the late 1970s-1990s, selling albums in rural Punjab and across Pakistan and India, and later playing to packed audiences around the world.

He took ill with kidney and liver failure on August 11, 1997 in London, England. While, on the way to Los Angeles to receive a kidney transplant, he died of a sudden cardiac arrest at Cromwell Hospital, London, on Saturday, August 16, 1997 at the age of 48.

TIME magazine ’s issue of November 6, 2006, “60 Years of Asian Heroes”, lists Nusrat as one of the top 12 Artists and Thinkers in the last 60 years. Five documentaries have been made on him.

British novelist, music journalist, and biographer, Chris Nickson said:

There are great singers, and then there are those few voices that transcend time. The late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan could not only transcend time, but also language and religion. There was magic when he opened his mouth, a sense of holy ecstasy that was exciting and emotional. It wasn’t uncommon even for Western listeners, who didn’t understand a word he was singing or follow his Sufi traditions, to be moved to tears upon hearing him.