Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: a Sufi Music Master Revived

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Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: A Sufi Music Master Revived : NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12201563 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.

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Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: A Sufi Music Master Revived by Anil Mundra

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August 7, 2007 - Resurrecting the dead is nothing new in music. Remember Natalie Cole singing and dancing with her late father, Nat King Cole? The latest luminary to be revived is the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. August 16 marks the tenth anniversary of his death. In his short life, Nusrat was the world's greatest singer of qawwali, a boisterous and passionate music of mystical Photo: Ishida Masataka Islam. He embraced western pop music, teaming up with Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Peter Gabriel and Eddie Vedder. Now, Nusrat returns with (1948-1997) was considered the finest qawwali singer of his generation. the help of Italian dub reggae producer Gaudi. Their new CD is called Dub Qawwali. SONGS FROM 'DUB QAWWALI' Gaudi is a veteran producer with 11 solo albums over the past two decades. He specializes in dub reggae, a style that Hear old Nusrat recordings dressed up in dub reggae beats by producer often reworks existing material, mixing booming bass and Gaudi. drums with electronic effects.

'Ena Akhiyan Noo' After dabbling in punk music, Gaudi began experimenting add with synthesizers, and was fully steeped in reggae when he first heard one of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's records in the

'Bethe Bethe Kese Kese' mid-1980s. By this time, Khan was already being called the add "Emperor of qawwali." Gaudi displays an appropriate reverence for the emperor, a fact that most likely helped him when he approached Khan's old record label. Gaudi says he was thrilled when they gave him full access to original 40-year-old reel-to-reel tapes of unreleased Nusrat sessions. "It was incredibly emotive for me, seeing the writing, handwriting and everything, I had goose bumps, really," Gaudi recalls. He took the tapes and worked some studio magic, removing unwanted instruments and laying the bare vocal tracks over Dub Qawwali combines the soaring his own beats. It was a daring venture, to be sure, but Gaudi vocals of the late Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the reggae style says that in all that tinkering, his aim was not to adapt Khan's called "dub." music to his own beats, but exactly the other way around. He was even careful to preserve the message of Khan's music. The message of [qawwali] and the message of reggae is exactly the "I couldn't understand what he was thinking about," Gaudi same. It's peace, love, and spirituality. says, "so I had to employ a translator. And making sure that all the vocals that phonetically for me sounded great, even - Gaudi meaning-wise made sense." That's part of the reason the record took Gaudi two years to make. He says he spent months just listening, before touching anything. And in the end, his careful study convinced him that he could safely use Jamaican dub beats without compromising the spirit of Khan's music. "Because the message of that music and the message of reggae is exactly the same," Gaudi says. "It's peace, love, Photo: Dan Welldon and spirituality. So that was my common denominator for

1 of 2 12/12/2010 5:46 PM Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: A Sufi Music Master Revived : NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12201563 Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Software http://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.

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