Today, I was serenading my ears with beautifully composed qawali of Late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,suddenly my memory reflected me to a long forgotten argument between my two teachers about a decade ago. One teacher,who claimed to be an authority on sub continental music asserted that Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali was off tone singer who just got lucky,other teacher was opposing this preposterous claim.
I was just a stand alone spectator, as I didn't have any workable knowledge of music then.
But now I would like to add my share to the pertinent debate. Ustad Nusarat himself revealed that his father didn't give Nusrat approval of making music as his profession because of the facts that qawali is not lucrative monetarily and qawals do not gain the social respect that they highly deserve. His father was also concerned about the quality of Nusrat’s voice and he insisted Nursrat that if he wants to pursue music as a career, he better learn to play instruments instead of going for vocals. Hitherto my teacher's claim that Nusrat was not a good singer can be substantiated, but what my connoisseur of music teacher failed to realize the true geniuses of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat knew that he could not change his voice, but what he did was unprecedented in the history of qawali in Pakistan. He as a great composer and innovator, molded the raags and alaaps in a way that they complement his vocals. Like his father who was legend in his own right , Nusrat fused Khayal raag and Dhurpad raag in his qawalis. Doing this , Nusrat revamped the whole qawali singing, and Nusrat created a whole new world around these raags. Nusrat got an immaculate control on the vicissitudes of his pitch. He could enunciate raags with such a valor that i haven't seen any one to his par.
Second line of argument my teacher made that he just got lucky; well I wont negate that totatly too as we are what our surrounding and circumstances are. Nusrat got an excellent ambiance for music from his pedigree and then the lyrics of Khawaja Pervaz (I am not exaggerating but in my personal view I rank Khawaja Pervaz on a very high pedestal , his work is comparable at any national or international level) did the trick. The combination was instant hit.
In the end I would like to say , sir in your face what ever you think about Nusrat’s voice quality or he just being lucky, he was a true legend and I don't think someone can fill his shoes.
