Search - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan :: Swan song

It's difficult to determine what the thinking was behind adding a drum kit, bass, synthesizer, and saxophone to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's ensemble for what became his final concert in May 1997. Perhaps it was naiveté, perhaps poor taste, but whatever the thinking was, the choice reduced the most revered religious singer of our time to the functional equivalent of a Western nightclub act dressed in powder-blue threads crooning at the Luxor in Las Vegas. The praise song "Allah Hoo," regularly sung to open Nusrat's concerts, holds back the qawwali party in a cutesy rhythm designed for folks to clap merrily along to rather than encourage the ensemble to blast off into heated ecstasy. It's hard to figure out who this concert is aimed at: Nusrat purists will run away screaming, and ambient fans of his work with Michael Brook and Peter Gabriel (which now seems tasteful beside this recording) will cringe. One wonders why this mystic Sufi who dedicated his life to praising God through traditional Islamic song allowed accompaniment from swishing high hat à la the Bee Gees' "Night Fever" disco heights--where the tabla is played as if a bongo or conga. What's even more amazing is how this concert ended up sounding so Western when recorded in Pakistan, home of Islam and Nusrat's most devout Muslim followers. Perhaps it'll be smooth jazzers who will adore the funky kooka-munga rhythms and "saxy" jazz lines played on electric piano and sax here. Apparently this was the inevitable commercial direction Nusrat was being led in before he died in August 1997, but it's still unfortunate that this label had to let us in on the dirty little secret. For an outstanding sample of Nusrat's work, check out Real World's Shahbaaz. --Karen Karleski