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THE SUPREME COLLECTION, VOL. 1
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan And Party
(Caroline)

There was a time when critics would apply the terms "exotic" or "obscure" to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's music, implying the author was somewhere rather close to the center of music and the artist in question somewhere very far away, probably in a land ravaged by heat and bad plumbing. But towards the end of his life Khan collaborated with Eddie Vedder, taught as an artist-in-residence at the University of Seattle, and provided music for such films as Dead Man Walking and Natural Born Killers, making it unlikely he will be called exotic again.

The qawwali music Khan popularized is now part of the mainstream--the consequence of pop culture's ravenous appetite to commodify what it deems as "exotic." But the term was never appropriate in the first place--the sheer number of Khan's fans worldwide make most American alterno bands and their followers look like tiny tribes. Further, Sufism, the branch of Islam that inspires qawwali music, has in excess of ten million adherents (more than the LDS Church) while Islam itself is the world's largest faith. So now that we know who is actually exotic and obscure, we can continue with the review.

Sufism, in response to orthopraxic Islam's fear of the corrupting possibilities of music, have embraced the sensual side of music in their search for the transcendent since their origins as an alternative form of Muslim piety in 10th century Persia--long before that tiny group of nomads in North America (Deadheads) decided they invented such things. Sufism spawned various factions, one of which was the Chisti order, which eventually made its way to the Indian subcontinent where qawwali emerged in its modern form.

Qawwali verses are usually just a few lines that are sung over and over, embroidered with varying vocal tones, and employ such themes as alcoholic intoxication or physical desire as metaphors for devotion to Allah and mystical enlightenment--"The eyes of my sweetheart are so bewitching, even the best wine of the tavern seems bitter in comparison."

A modern qawwal (or lead singer) like Khan is usually backed up by a dholak (a two-headed finger drum), tabla, and a few additional singers who lead the choral response and furious hand claps. The instrumentalists generally start a tune, staking out the melodic motif, then the qawwal wanders in with the first lines, followed by call-and-response vocals. The tempo gradually builds, entrancing listeners in higher and higher states of divine unification. Or so goes the theory--a lot depends on whether the audience are cultural surfers in NYC or devout Sufis in Kashmir.

Khan has appropriately been called the Shen-Shah-e-Qawwali, "the brightest star of qawwali music," and this two-CD collection features his best traditional music, while leaving out his less interesting crossover work. (Fritz Umbach)

In a nutshell: As Jeff Buckley wrote in Interview, "I've seen Nusrat and his party repeatedly melt New Yorkers into human beings."