NFAK
by Alex
I for one welcome my NPR overlords. I’ve held off commenting on NPR’s “Fifty Great Voices” series despite my obsession with the human voice because… well really because I didn’t care that much. I thought about saying something when someone objected that Iggy Pop was not, technically, a ‘great voice’ — never argue with a fool in public, etc. But this evening as my scarily erudite beloved scares up images of Moorish manuscripts I did want to second the Public Radio Overlords’ nomination of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
I will be honest with you: I do not know very much about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s music. There is a good reason for this: about thirteen years ago (!) one of the guys I work with hooked me up with the album “The Last Prophet” from Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label, and this is the only album I’ve ever really listened to by him. In fact, I have not yet gotten to the second track of the album. For the last thirteen years I have been listening to the same track of the same album, over and over, and I still feel that I have not reached the bottom of it.
It’s not counterpoint or a Bach fugue and it doesn’t feature a full orchestra so I suppose at some level the music is not all that ‘complex’, but the tracks is seventeen minutes long and, let’s face it, it combines the best parts of the late Coltrane with Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria, which is not something everyone can say. We get the theme immediately, and variations are pyrotechnic, they climax, and then the piece winds down. There is a lot to say about Khan’s incredible vocal technique — as there is about the guy in the ensemble with the slightly higher voice — but it’s the mixture of intelligence and ecstasy in equal intensity (something that rarely happens) that I find so amazing. And that is just the individual singers. The ensemble work is equally insanely powerful. It’s ecstasy without simplicity, complexity without intellectualism: a genuine, overwhelming craftsmanship of the soul.
Now, In opposition to the ubiquitous refrain today that people are ‘spiritual but not religious’ I often insist that I am ‘religious but not spiritual’, and I firmly resist the idea that the Christian music I sing is acultural (if it was you wouldn’t have to be a liturgy junky to get it). Still, I have to admit that this music has a power to it that is undeniable. Is it the piety of the performers or something deeper? I’m not sure — like I said, the only thing I’ve heard is the first track — but there is no doubt in my mind that if these were ‘boy meet girl’ or ‘baby I want you’ lyrics the piece would never have the obvious power it has for both performers and listeners.
I’ve taken a quick look around — most online music stores will sell you the whole album for ten bucks but not the first track. If you have 10 bucks and 15 years of your life free, I’d really urge you to pick the album up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.