Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Opened the World’s Ears to the Rich, Hypnotic Sounds of the Sufis

Back in the nineties when youngsters in India were raving about AR Rahman’s music (including its top quality audio recording & arrangement), Nusrat’s music (usually remixed by Bally Saggoo) were also quite popular with the younger lot. It was just a matter of time before the world sat up and took notice of Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s talents.

Purists may argue that Nusrat would take liberties with his Qawwali’s and some of them were really not qawallis in the true sense. However Nusrat was willing to take that approach and gave more importance to fusion, in order to popularize qawwali among the youth. And he managed to do that during his life.

Nusrat collaborated with several international musicians, and was solely responsible for making the world familiar with the mystical Qawwali tunes.

When Nusrat was not yet a popular name in India, several Bollywood composers blatantly lifted his tunes and used it in Bollywood songs (as mentioned below). That was also the time when the music scene in Bollywood was going through a rough patch and had hit an all-time low. No wonder, film composers were looking for inspiration.

Top Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Songs

Search engine giant Google celebrated Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s birthday with a doodle on its homepage for India, Pakistan and a few more countries, calling him the person “who opened the world’s ears to the rich, hypnotic sounds of the Sufis.

Singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya, who in his hey days had sung a few songs for Shahrukh Khan, always had a dislike for Pakistani singers and he even once called Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan a ‘street singer’.