From: MHB@MITVMA.BITNET (Michael H. Bloom)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Subject: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Date: 13 Oct 92 18:38:04 GMT
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU

Saw Nusrat's concert of qawwali singing at Harvard's Sanders Theater on Sunday,
and it was amazing. Qawwali singing is an Islamic tradition dating back to the
13th century or so, a cross between a quasi-liturgical chanting of divine love
poetry and a vocal equivalent of dervish rites of ecstatic trance. It sounds
something like raga, something like the Grateful Dead for voices instead of
guitars. It's incredibly rich and melismatic singing, with a driving rhythm.

Nusrat's "party" consists of eight singers. Nusrat himself is the main singer,
and it looks like he gets to decide things like what text they'll sing and what
key they'll sing it in-- he brought a book with him on stage and was visibly
thumbing through it between numbers. There were two singers in the front row
with Nusrat that also played hand-pumped harmoniums, one of whom was Nusrat's
brother (and Nusrat would suggest licks on the keyboard between songs, which
leads me to wonder whether the texts and the tunes are independent). There was
also one other singer who didn't play, and was visibly younger than any of the
others; he's a student who's sort of apprenticed to Nusrat, to learn the craft
from the master. Any one of these would take a solo spot at what seemed like
any moment, so the call-and-response character got rather complicated as some
lick of Nusrat's could be answered by any of them. During the real virtuosic
improvs, however, it got down to Nusrat singing a lick (with what were probably
Arabic solfege syllables) and the kid answering the same lick just going "Aah."
The other four singers joined in the choruses of tunes, singing repeating lines
(the first song they played had a chorus consisting solely of the words "Allah
hu," which I think means "Allah is he"); one also played tablas and other hand
drums, and the other three kept the beat with handclaps-- which the audience
took up soon enough.

The first song lasted for half an hour, and was just gorgeous-- it sounded like
an idealized campfire singalong. The basic melody had some subtle twists in it,
so while I remember vaguely what it did, I couldn't quite sing along, nor can I
reproduce it now. (It's alleged to appear on an import recording of Nusrat that
I have to get.) The singing is all in tenor range, with Nusrat hitting notes up
to two E's above middle C, and the kid eventually climbing to the F# or G above
that-- an octave full of notes I haven't been able to hit since I was 15 or so.
(One harmonium player conspicuously dropped into his falsetto for these notes.)
Some of the improvising clearly was known licks, since the harmoniums kept up
with some of Nusrat's gyrations, but some of it appeared to be spontaneous. At
times the audience would cheer or applaud or shout out something that didn't
seem to be related to a particular feat of virtuosity, which might have been a
particularly witty or pious or metaphoric line of verse-- always interesting to
become a second-class citizen on what you thought was your home turf :-)

Nusrat was beginning to lead the party into the second number when the fire
alarm went off. We filed outside to wait it out, for what turned out to be an
hour, while the fire marshal came and couldn't find anything. Probably just the
accumulated fervor of the singing and clapping and cheering and praising of
Allah. I noticed that Nusrat didn't let the songs go on so long after that--
there were eight songs in the next two hours, plus, as an encore, a reprise of
"Mustt Mustt," which Nusrat appears to have become convinced is his big hit in
the States. (This is the tune that the Real World production team took out of
context and made a dance mix out of.) Other than that, there were three songs I
recognized: the title track of _Shahbazz_, his most recent Real World release,
and the first two songs from his very excellent Shanachie recording _The Day,
The Night, The Dawn, The Dusk_, which I think more closely resembled the actual
sound of the live event better than the Real World CDs.

The melodies ran a considerable gamut. There were several instances of the
minor seconds and sixths that have become the great cliche of oriental music.
There were also instances of surprisingly Western changes, including one that
started with the Am-G-F-G pattern from "Stairway to Heaven" (among a zillion
other tunes). There were several that were ambiguous, using both major and
minor tones in practically all the scale degrees-- twelve-tone, if you like.

The audience got more into it as the night went on. People walked up onto the
stage and dropped money on Nusrat or on other members of the party, including
several quite large bills, which the performers blithely ignored. There was
some bantering between the crowd and Nusrat, probably in Urdu. Several people
danced in their seats, then in the aisles, then by the encore, dozens of people
(many in white djellabas and sporting colorful scarves) clambered on stage and
formed a big circle around the party.

So the next time somebody tells me "There's nothing like a Grateful Dead show,"
I plan to tell him about this event. It was just wonderful. If Nusrat is coming
anywhere near you, see it.