The genius of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.”- Mae West
If stars are unreachable then probably the maestro of Sufi and Qawwali, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is someone who is even beyond them. It is said that he used to practice for eight hours before every performance and had the caliber to pull off each and every song for an hour long, which is quite impossible for any singer of this era. Everyone says that he definitely had some connection with the energies around, else it is humanely impossible to make a sudden shift from higher octave to lower octave and vice-versa. He proved to the world that a performer is a performer till his last breath, as even after repetitive warnings by doctors that he would die if he keeps drinking or keeps singing; he couldn’t leave either of them and chose to leave the world.
It has been seventeen years that he has gone but the fever of his music, the magic of his voice and the soul in his performance has stayed with us since ever and indeed everyone amongst us feel that no one can be even a nail closer to him when it comes to the talent of singing.
We all are living in the times, where we groove on the Bollywood beats or electronic dance music, either in parties or pubs and a lot of us love listening to the same. Unfortunately, Qawwali being the oldest form of performing art is sidelined, when we look at it on commercial grounds, although exceptions exists like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, whose qawwalis are sada bahar (meant for ever).
Tatva Kundalini aka Tatva K has revived the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Shehanshah of Qawwali, through giving a touch of modernity to it. He believes that as we are evolving every day ,even the music is evolving, so in his next album called ‘#NFAK’ he has added electronic dance music to each song of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan without touching the soul of the song but yet perfectly designing it to be as groovy as possible.
“Creating EDM is not a difficult task for me; I have been doing it for past innumerable years. However, I should accept that this project was extremely difficult for me. It took me two months to recreate his songs with EDM in it. First few weeks were troublesome as I could get nothing about what to do and what not, because we had to place each and every word at the right place but it was such a difficult task as either his one word would be at heights of octave or the other would be underground, sometimes the words would get inaudible or too loud.
There was even a time when I wanted to give up as even after day long work nothing was happening. I went up to my sound manager and for the very first time said ‘I can’t do this!’ he too tried all night but couldn’t do anything, although next day we just pressed a button and magically everything was set. Such incidences make us believe in miracles and I think it is completely Nusratji’s wish and blessing that he chose us to do this project. We have put in our cent-percent efforts in this album. The responsibility was very big and we cannot give out a bad output, we wanted to do justice and we have tried all that we are capable of. ”, says Tatva K.
Further adding to it, Atharv Nandra says, “This project has happened in front of me and every time I listen to the compositions of Nusratji I get goose bumps. As early as I can remember, since my childhood I have grown up listening to Nusratji’s songs. He is god for me when it comes to singing and performing and that is why whenever I perform his songs I ask for forgiveness if somewhere I go wrong and yes absolutely it is indeed a big honor for me to get such chances to perform.”
Few videos are already out for the audience, the album is geared up to blast the dance floors on 6th of September, 2014 at the unbelievable stage of Kingdom of Dreams. The album would be launched by the well-known singer, Dr.Palash Sen, followed by a tribute performance to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan by young and talented singer, Atharv Nandra and is produced by DuckU Records and recorded at Chill Om Records.
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