Few voices in the history of music have travelled as far as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's. Born in Faisalabad into a family whose qawwali lineage runs back some six centuries, he took over the family party in 1971 and spent the next quarter-century carrying Sufi devotional music to audiences who had never heard a word of Urdu or Punjabi — and left them in tears anyway.
Where to begin
If you are new to his work, start with the pieces that made his name: the hypnotic ‘Sochta Hun’, and the Coke Studio duet ‘Afreen Afreen’, reimagined by his nephew Rahat. From there, the rest of the catalogue opens up like a map.
The tradition he came from
Nusrat never sang alone: qawwali is an ensemble form, and his artistry sat inside a much older tradition of qawwali that Patari keeps alive. Hear it beside contemporaries like the Sabri Brothers and you begin to understand what he inherited — and how far he took it.
Explore the full Qawwali Classics collection, or browse everything in Urdu and Punjabi on Patari.