Swap a CD: 15 Recently Posted CDs in Pakistan

Shafqat Ali Khan - Shafqat Ali Khan

Shafqat Ali Khan — 2013-05-16T12:39:22-05:00

Shafqat Ali Khan is the son of famed Pakistani singer Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, who was the uncle and one of the first teachers of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the best-known exponent of Pakistani Qawaali singing. But you can't listen to a lineage, and Shafqat Ali Khan blazes his own path on this self-titled album co-composed with keyboardist Douglas McKeehan, known for his work with the world-fusion group Ancient Future. Together, they create a contemporary extrapolation of the gharana music tradition, a sound of unbridled passion that spins off vocal ornaments that sound like a baroque painting on acid. This isn't traditional music souped up with modern arrangements, but new compositions built from the ground up. Shafqat writes his own, Rumiesque lyrics, ranging from the love song of "Ashina" to the ecstatic rave-up of "Dance of My Soul." It's that mixture of sensuality and spirituality that creates the tension of Qawaali music. McKeehan's inventive arrangements often eschew Pakistani signposts completely, from the bluegrass banjo on "Dust to Dust" to the cyclical guitar lines of Richard Michos on "Valley of Memories." Beautifully produced, Khan and McKeehan create a dynamic relief to what can often be an unremittingly intense music. --John Diliberto

Shabaz - Shabaz (Dig)

Shabaz — 2012-06-28T19:08:29-05:00

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Michael Brook - Night Song

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Michael Brook — 2012-06-06T01:16:51-05:00

Canadian experimental guitarist Brook and the late, "shining star of Qawwal" come together for a second time to bring the music of Pakistan into a creative new realm. If you are a traditionalist who wants nothing but Pakistani music, stay away. This album is soaked in ambient electronic guitar noises and some of Khan's most out-of-the-tradition singing. These experiments are not to be confused with lots of the electro-noodling, however. Both artists were devoted to their gods and their music, and it shows in the potency of these tracks. Brook seems to have been a natural match for Nusrat and has drawn out an unusual performance that probably fulfills the ideas that were only hinted at in their first collaboration, Musst Musst. --Louis Gibson

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Dust to Gold

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — 2012-02-17T12:15:20-05:00

You might think this posthumous release of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and party would either suffer in quality of music or be a patched-together compendium of leftover bits from Real World's archives, but this is not the case with Dust to Gold. These recordings from Nusrat's hometown of Lahore, Pakistan, feature the great singer performing as vibrantly as ever with tabla and clapping rhythms thriving. His voice sounds robust and flexible, as do the ensemble's joined chant. Nusrat trades call and response with ensemble member Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan on tracks "Khawaja Tum Hi Ho" ("Master It Is Only You") and "Koi Hai Na Ho Ga" ("There Was No One, There Will Not Be Anyone"), and the vocal artistry reaches the same divine, drunken brilliance that Nusrat and party concocted when the master was alive, full of life, and touring. It's unclear where exactly these performances were recorded, but the sound quality is stunning. It's perhaps one of Real World's best offerings, without the dryness of such earlier collections as The Last Prophet or Shahbaaz. Here the tabla's low end is round and fruitful, the harmonium bounces off a slight echo, and there's a live-room effect that adds a richness to all tonalities. This is one of Nusrat's final releases, so how satisfying that it's also one of his best. --Karen K. Hugg

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Music From And Inspired By Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — 2012-01-02T18:49:36-05:00

Bandit Queen by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Last Prophet

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — 2011-12-10T13:27:21-05:00

The Last Prophet functions as an excellent, easy-on-the-ears introduction to the great Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his party. Featuring rarer selections of the ensemble's extensive repertoire and recorded without reverb effect, the CD meshes the party's amazing vocal art into songs that contain all the fervor that is the nature of qawwali while still retaining a rhythmic, melodious sound familiar to Westerners. "Maki Madni" is a luxurious, two-tempoed tune growing into a wonderful, exploding chorus in praise of Muhammad; "Gunj-E-Shakar" is special in its portentous, urgent cadence. While Nusrat's vocal expertise isn't as incredibly full and wide-ranged as in earlier recordings, this CD is still the better pick for those in need of a Nusrat introduction that's lighter in intensity than the wildest, most intense Nusrat and party. --Karen Karleski

Various Artists - Six Degrees Collection: Asian Travelers

Various Artists — 2011-09-27T19:55:10-05:00

CD > POPULAR MUSIC > WORLD

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Swan Song

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — 2011-08-16T12:12:17-05:00

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

Jonathan Elias Lawrence Schwartz English Chamber Orchestra Devin Provenzano James Taylor Richard Bona Ofra Haza Linda Ronstadt Alanis Morissette Salif Keita Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Mah Damba Yungchen Lhamo - The Prayer Cycle

2011-01-11T16:46:38-05:00

It is with primitive urgency and lustrous clarity rising like flickering embers from a fire that Jonathan Elias's ambitious Prayer Cycle is given voice. Woven together like knotty wool, silk, and fine strands of silvery water, the disparate yet complementary voices of the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Alanis Morissette, Yungchen Lhamo, Ofra Haza, the American Boychoir, Salif Keita, and others intertwine in multiple languages with the superb English Chamber Orchestra and Chorus. Prayers of supplication, gratitude, and longing build in layers, one on top of and 'twixt and 'tween the other, as movements titled "Mercy," "Grace," "Innocence," "Compassion," and the like. Remarkably, Elias's Prayer Cycle eloquently captures the ecstasy, pain, grief, and sublime beauty of humanity--as he simply and poignantly writes in his liner notes, "The world we live in is both joyous and cruel." --Paige La Grone

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Bandit Queen

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — 2010-02-19T15:16:58-05:00