Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

I've long suspected that if I were able to be a mystic of any sort, I'd be a Sufi, probably a Qawwali singer. Not only is Sufism a profoundly beautiful religion, offering, to my mind, the most engaging and interesting mystical tradition to spring from the Religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), but it's artistic traditions are fascinating (alas, Sufism is marred by patriarchy; Qawwali troupes are supposed to be exclusively male. <sigh/>). I've been listening to large doses of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan lately, and I find it to be as enchantingly challenging as it is strangely familiar. Having had too much childhood exposure to Southern Pentacostalism -- a largely mystical religious tradition, though one that is sectarian and small and mean -- I've seen and heard things that I can't easily explain, not without being reductionistic in a way that's ultimately not very enlightening. And so when I hear Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn embark on 20 or 30 minute vocal adventures, during which he transforms himself into the living voice of divine ecstasy, I understand everything and nothing.

This music isn't for everyone, and it's the kind of thing you know about almost instantly: either you are captivated or you don't see the big fuss. If you have the slightest interest in Islam, or mystical religious traditions or in vocal pyrotechnics of a kind rarely heard emanating from a man as egoless as the wind and the stars, then you owe it to yourself to listen to any 2 minutes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's epic The Supreme Collection Volume 1. If you're like me at all, that first 2 minutes will stretch to 20 then 200 then...