Nusrat Fateh Ali remembered

Sunday marked the 12th death anniversary of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shahenshah-e-Qawwali and a legend in his lifetime, who had worked with iconic names in the Western music like Eddie Vedder, Peter Gabriel and progressive guitarist and producer Michael Brook.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the man who made his country proud of him all over the world, made a great impression on the music scene with mingling of Eastern poetic music with that of the West, a private TV channel reported.

He was an excellent singer possessing a six-octave vocal range and could perform at a high-level of intensity for several hours. He brought Pakistani Sufi music to a huge international audience until his death over a decade ago. Born into a family with a centuries-long tradition of Qawwali singing, Khan began recording in the early `70s after ignoring his father’s wishes that he should pursue medicines.

He sang in Urdu, Punjabi and occasionally Persian. Khan also captivated many Westerners including such musicians as Vedder, Joan Osborne and the late Jeff Buckley as well as Hollywood types like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

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. Since then, many posthumous albums have been released, but an accurate count of the total number of albums is not available.