Nusrat was a qawalli singer of prodigous talent. As I listen with Western ears, Nusrat's spirit and passion bring Ray Charles and John Coltrane to mind. He'll likely be remembered by our descendents as one of Earth's shining musical lights during the 20th century.
Qawalli is a devotional song form. The lyrics sung in a qawalli can praise God directly. More frequently, they speak of a lover's passion for the beloved, which are at the same time interpreted to express one's love and passion for God, and one's desire to be united with God. The songs are usually sung in the Urdu or Punjabi languages.
Nusrat was the leader of his party, a group of singers. The party's vocalists also accompany the performance using tabla, harmoniums and hand-clapping. The party includes four or five extremely talented master vocalists, who sit in the first row of the party and take solos during a performance.
Nusrat was leader because of the power of his singing, the imaginativeness of his improvisations, and his mastery of the form.
The junior member of the party, Rahat, Nusrat's nephew is a teenager at the time of this video and sits at the far right of the first row of singers. After Nusrat died in 1997, Rahat inherited the leadership of the party.
This video records an entire performance by the party in the early 1990s. They sing four different pieces over an hour and fifty minutes.
The performance starts with no definite tempo as Nusrat and the other lead singers answer each other with vocal solos accompanied by harmonium, a hand pumped reed organ.
If you've never listened to qawwali before, I'd recommend that you start listening at the 10 minute 50 second mark where Nusrat introduces the tune's melody, tempo starts, the tabla begin to play and the party starts to clap to mark the pulse. After you understand what they are building towards, come back and listen to the whole thing.
My Trusted MOGs
I had the opportunity to hear this great singer with his party at the Greek Theater in Berkeley not too long before his untimely death. It was the most inspiring and emotional experience I have ever had; I was hoarse from shouting and my hands sore from clapping. People would come up to the group and throw money at them as a sign of respect. A group seated below me said they had flown from Hong Kong to hear this vocal master. He has many records out; one of the best is recorded by Rick Rubin, label American Recordings and tilted The Final Studio Recordings. Worth seeking out. R. Baird
My Trusted MOGs
(With every post, we gradually become aware of the extraordinary journey you've planned for us, DL.)
The music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan you've offered for our aural consideration is both pathetic and incredible sensuous. Indeed, one must be patient and wait past the 11th minute of this video in order to enjoy the qawalli with its infectious beats and hand clap That's also when you really witness the art of skilful improvisation from Ali Khan. - It doesn't that the first 10 minutes are useless: you get to admire the pathos of the chant and Ali Khan's extraordinary expressiveness. - Then at around 22' into the performance, you can clearly the strength of the raga motif. Simply exhilarating.
Just beautiful - many thanks for posting something which requires time and focus in order to be fully appreciated and enjoyed. (It's a shame that we don't stop to listen to music any more or can seldom afford time for music only)
My Trusted MOGs
Bartleby, many Western listeners don't like and don't understand the early parts of performances by Indian musicians and those by musicians in related traditions like qawwali.
I recommended skipping the early slow part of the first of Nusrat's tunes because I thought most listeners I was writing for would turn off the video before they reached the point where tempo is established, and Nusrat's party starts to use performance rules that correspond to some that we are used to.
I'm pleased that you were able to appreciate the slow sections of the performance. It shows what big ears you have.
I'd like as many as possible to understand what the musicians are doing during the tempoless sections, so to increase appreciation for what might be puzzling, here's a little briefing that describes how drone-based music from the Indian and qawwali traditions can work.
We Westerners are trained to believe that music without a steady tempo is of relatively less value or valueless. Tedious at best.
If we're not moving, we're doing wrong.
Indian traditions and the qawwali tradition accepts that wonderful music can be created, even without the use of a definite pulse. Their performances frequently start with tempoless sections that can last for a considerable period of time.
In Indian music a drone is continually sounded and is never altered once established. In qawwali a drone note is established early on by the harmonium players, and the party vocalists singing it in unison. The harmoniums leave the drone note to follow the singer's voices but do frequently come back to that established drone note.
In these musical traditions, chordal harmony plays no part in how the music is played. In Indian music there is a network of twenty or thirty pitches are all felt to be in-tune with the drone pitch that is sounding. These pitch possibilities are felt to be close relatives of the drone which are very consonant when sounded with the drone or to be more distant relatives which are felt to form a more disonant sensation when sounded with the drone.
A much smaller selection of those possible pitches is selected, and melodies for a performance are made up from that smaller pitch selection. That pitch selection is the major constituent of an Indian rag. Rags are not linear orderings of notes like the scales used in Western music. Instead the tradition of a particular rag dicates gestures that are very frequently used when you travel from pitch to pitch in the collection, and which pitch transitions are permitted.
There are prescriptions which dicate the possiblities you, a performing musician, should consider when you ornament a pitch when you visit it in the melody that you improvise (does the goal pitch have an upper or lower neighbor, do you oscillate between these pitches so that you visit the lower, the upper and the goal pitch, in extremely quick succession or some other traversal rule, what kind of vibrato do you use and how does it vary as a pitch is held, can you slide from one pitch in the rag to another, what are the characteristics of the slide, etc). These rules are all used in the service of creating the moods that a particular rag are thought to evoke.
Performances of an Indian rag, start with an extremely slow and tempoless exposition of the characteristics of the rag which is called the alap section. The goal during these is for the soloist to demonstrate the major paths through the rag and in doing so create poignant melodies. The soloists progressively wander away from the drone and then dramatically or suprisingly return to it. The act of returning to identity with the drone is thought to have spiritual significance, an image of the soul restablishing harmony with the ground or source of its being.
I have not had anyone explain the exact theory behind the slow introductory sections of qawalli to me, but the aesthetic seems real familiar to the Indian idea. The are introducing the main soloists in the party, and they are each showing their skill with varying the melodic gestures that they will use when they sing the song at tempo. Their goal seems again to be to create poignant melody with those intrductory materials. They sing with many different varieties of vibrato that minutely take them away and put them back in identity with their drone note. They also travel to pitches that are a very small interval away from the drone and return to it.
Now you have some idea what the musical game is supposed to be, listen to those tempoless sections of those performances and see if they make more sense.
You may have to listen to them awhile before you get into the game. You may never be able to, depending on your training and predilections.
I do admit that I sometimes lose patience with these parts of Eastern music performances, but frequently I do enjoy them greatly.
My Trusted MOGs
I don't what to say after this except: Thank you for contribution to the edification of this simple mind. - Your post allows us to better understand the music and thus better enjoy it. As Victor Hugo said: "Music is sound that thinks" and you've just proved his point.
My Trusted MOGs
Dave is far more adept than I at explaining the musical intricacies of Qawwali music, but I can add a bit of insight into the social meaning of the music. Though, proper caveats should be given: I am, by no means, an expert in Sufism.
Having said that, it helps to remember that Qawwali music is part of a Sufi mystical ritual. Sufis believe that we can achieve, if only for brief moments, a level of oneness with our Creator. The Qawwali ritual, then, is an attempt to achieve that oneness through music in the same way that the dances of a whirling dervish are a ritual attempt to achieve this same oneness.
In the poems of Hafez and Rumi, this concept of mystical oneness is often expressed in the form of a relationship between a lover and his Beloved. The lover is us. The Beloved symbolizes God (which is why it's often capitalized in western translations of Sufi literature). I'll use this same symbology to explain the purpose of the music, but it should be remembered that this is symbolism, not reality.
The opening alap, then, is symbolic of the lover's separation from his Beloved. The drone represents the Beloved, and the seemingly aimless wandering of the alap is representative of the lover's search for the Beloved. The gradual resolution of the alap into a melodic theme is the lover finding a path to the Beloved.
Once the alap has resolved into the raga, this represents the lover having found the path. From that point forward, the remainder of the song represents traversal along the path that was discovered during the alap. Both the crescendo and the increasing pace of the song signify increasing nearness to the Beloved, until that state of oneness is achieved.
Lastly, in one of those musical connections you never thought existed, Clapton's Layla is based on the story of Majnun and Layla (though I think the woman's name was really Layli, not Layla). The story is a Sufi poem, and it's all about Majnun's separation from his beloved. Majnun wanders aimlessly lamenting his separation from his Beloved Layli, until it appears to everyone around him that he's gone mad. A guard seeks to restrain Majnun, but he escapes, and, while fleeing from the guard, scales a garden wall only to be confronted by Layli, herself.
In the Sufi poem, Majnun symbolizes us, and Layli symbolizes God. But, I don't think Clapton ever understodd that symbology.
My Trusted MOGs
After posting the comment above last night, it occurred to me that one can find a musical tradition very similar to the alap in a Qawwali song. So, I did a web search for "Arabic Chant", and the video below popped up. (Honest, Dave, I didn't go looking for anything Baha'i--it's what popped up in the search).
This is an example of a very common Islamic and Baha'i practice of chanting prayers, and is markedly similar to the alap in the video Dave posted. While I'm not enough of a historian to be able to say anything definitive on the subject, I don't think the similarities are coincidental.
In this context, the similarities, to me at least, underscore the devotional nature of the opening alap. At its core, it's a supplication--a common practice of offering up a prayer before undertaking this spiritual journey.