Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born in 1948 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, into a family with a long lineage of qawwali singers, the devotional Sufi musical tradition built around powerful call-and-response vocals, harmonium and tabla-driven rhythms. He took over leadership of the family qawwali party in the 1970s and, through his extraordinary vocal range and improvisational stamina, became widely regarded as the greatest qawwali singer of his generation, earning the honorific title «Shahenshah-e-Qawwali», the Brightest Star of Qawwali.

His performances were built around long, hypnotic build-ups designed to induce a trance-like spiritual state known as wajd, moving from restrained melodic passages to explosive, high-register vocal runs. Beyond the traditional qawwali circuit, he became one of the first South Asian devotional artists to reach a global audience, collaborating with Peter Gabriel's Real World label, contributing to film soundtracks such as «Dead Man Walking», and influencing Western musicians and producers who remixed his recordings for club audiences.

His best-known pieces, including «Mere Rashke Qamar» and «Tere Bin Nahin Lagda», remain staples of qawwali and continue to be sampled and covered across South Asian film and pop music decades later. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died in 1997, but his recordings remain foundational listening for both traditional qawwali audiences and international listeners discovering Sufi music.