The soulful voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will be heard once again by his fans all over the world as a new album of unheard recordings by the late Qawwali legend is set to be released in September.
Titled 'Chain of Light', the album was discovered in the archives of British musician Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records, the label that signed Khan in 1989 and released a series of universally acclaimed albums with him throughout the 1990s.
The label has now decided to release the album on September 20, a press release said. “I’ve had the privilege to work with a tonne of different musicians from all over the world in my time, but perhaps the greatest singer of them all was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,” Peter Gabriel said in a statement on the label's official website.
“What he could do and make you feel with his voice was quite extraordinary and we were very proud to have played a role in getting him to a much wider global audience. It was a real delight when we found out this tape had been in our library. This album really shows him at his peak. It’s a wonderful record,” he added.
The recordings were buried deep in a warehouse storage space at Real World Studios in England and were unearthed whilst the label was relocating its archive in 2021.
The tape recording that comprises "Chain of Light" finds Khan at a crossroads, on the cusp of global greatness, the statement read.
Khan, often hailed as the "Shahenshah-e-Qawwali", was celebrated world over for his powerful and soulful voice.
Born in 1948 in Faisalabad, Pakistan, he belonged to a family with a rich tradition in Qawwali, a form of sufi devotional music. His ability to blend traditional Qawwali with contemporary music styles brought him international acclaim, and he is credited with popularizing the genre of music worldwide.
With a career spanning over three decades, Nusrat's contributions to music earned him numerous accolades and a lasting legacy as one of the greatest voices ever recorded.
He died of a sudden cardiac arrest in 1997 at the age of 48. “1990 was a key point in Nusrat’s career, it was the beginning of him crossing over into a western audience. Everything just clicked. He always wanted to experiment and not be limited to one sound and these tracks express that movement beyond," said Khan’s longtime international manager, Rashid Ahmed-Din.
