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    Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Voice Stunned the World (and Will Again)

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    “Chain of Light,” an album of four qawwalis the Pakistani singer recorded in 1990, are arriving after being discovered in the vaults of Peter Gabriel’s label.On Oct. 27, 2022, the photojournalist Saiyna Bashir was interviewing the musician Michael Brook in his Los Angeles studio when she learned something that prompted an urgent text to Zakir Thaver, her filmmaker colleague in Pakistan:“New undiscovered album.”Bashir and Thaver were producing an upcoming documentary called “Ustad” about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — the celebrated Pakistani singer who died in 1997 at age 48 — and Brook, the silver-haired musician whose ambient work has crossed paths with Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Michael Mann, had just revealed that he was working on an unreleased Khan song.It was part of “Chain of Light,” an album Brook recorded with Khan at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in England more than three decades ago. “Ya Gaus Ya Meeran,” the track in question, was an unreleased Khan qawwali, a song based on the devotional poetry of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam.Khan, a polyglot whose musical family initially dissuaded him from singing in favor of another career, first appeared onstage as a teenager after the death of his father in 1964. Over the next two decades, his music became a balm and source of national pride for Pakistan. He began recording with Gabriel in 1988, and soon appeared on Trent Reznor’s “Natural Born Killers” soundtrack and with Eddie Vedder on the “Dead Man Walking” soundtrack. “Chain of Light” — with four traditional qawwalis written in Urdu, Punjabi and Persian that were recorded in April 1990 — will be released by Real World Records on Friday. (Khan’s daughter, Nida, along with Usha Rajan, the custodian of his estate and a family friend, have both been involved with this project.)Gabriel, who first encountered Khan when he saw him performing at the WOMAD festival, which he helped found, in 1985, recalled the moment specifically: “It was dusk and you could feel the whole arena becoming charged with the qawwali and that extraordinary, spellbinding voice,” he wrote in an email. Later working with Khan, “I was astonished at his ability to improvise wonderful melodies with all their emotional peaks and troughs,” he added. “He was not just a maestro of the voice but a master composer who could create these classic lines on the fly whilst maintaining a great sense of the whole composition, as it emerged out of the ether for the very first time.”Oran Mullan, whose job as project manager at Real World involves reintroducing the label’s material to an online audience, discovered the album’s 24-track, two-inch magnetic tapes during one of his daily scans of warehouse shelves in June 2021. Scribbled across the box was: “Trad Album,” artist: “Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.”Mullan initially thought it was one of Khan’s previously released qawwali albums. “The idea that we would find something else seemed unlikely,” he said in a phone interview from England. Mullan and Amanda Jones, the label’s manager, fast-tracked its digitization and sent it to Brook, who had released “Mustt Mustt” (1990) and “Night Song” (1996), with Khan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How a Novelist Became a Pop Star

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      “I hope you fall in love, I hope it breaks your heart” is the refrain (in English translation) of “Pasoori,” Ali Sethi’s 2022 global hit. Is this a curse or a blessing? The song, performed as a duet with the Pakistani singer Shae Gill, defies such simple classifications — it’s a pop banger sung in Urdu and Punjabi, punctuated with flamenco handclaps and driven by a reggaeton beat. Sethi, a Pakistani-born artist who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, composed it in the wake of a thwarted collaboration with an Indian organization that feared reprisal (because of a 2016 ban on hiring Pakistani creatives). Drawing on themes from ghazals — sly courtesan poems about desire and betrayal that have doubled as political critiques, a genre that dates to seventh-century Arabia — “Pasoori” is at once “a love song, a bit of a flower bomb thrown at nationalism, a queer anthem, a protest song, a power ballad [and] a song of togetherness,” Sethi says. It’s now been viewed some 850 million times on YouTube, including by countless Indian fans.Sethi, 39, is a master of microtonal singing, gliding between the notes of the Western tempered scale. He’s been lauded for sounding like a vestige of another age — his supple, keening tenor the result of years of apprenticeship to the Pakistani artists Ustad Saami and Farida Khanum. Growing up in Lahore, where he was recognized at school for his academic and artistic abilities but also, he says, “taunted by both students and teachers for being part of a queer cohort,” he found in traditional music a way to be good but also fabulous, rooted without being fixed.Back then, he didn’t see the arts as offering a viable career path. As an undergraduate at Harvard in the early aughts, he was expected to study economics. He instead took courses on South Asian history and world fiction, and first read Jane Austen at the behest of his teacher Zadie Smith. In 2009, he published “The Wish Maker,” a semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel set in his home city. The narrator navigates the wounds and thrills of adolescence, as well as a factionalized, globalizing country, alongside his female cousin: They watch an “Indiana Jones” film (“about an American man of the same name who wore hats and enjoyed the company of blonde women”) and are puzzled by its Indian villain; they fuel their crushes with love songs by Mariah Carey and the Pakistani artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.According to Sethi, his hit single “Pasoori” is at once “a love song, a bit of a flower bomb thrown at nationalism, a queer anthem, a protest song, a power ballad [and] a song of togetherness.”Philip CheungThe book was well received, though Sethi now thinks its realist form couldn’t fully accommodate Pakistan, a society in flux. As he was finishing the novel in Lahore in 2007, the country was besieged by sectarian violence. His father, Jugnu Mohsin — both he and Sethi’s mother, Najam Sethi, are prominent journalists and publishers — received death threats, and Sethi spent over a year in hiding, staying in the basements of friends. In 2011, he traveled to India to work as an adviser on Mira Nair’s 2012 film, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel. One evening, when everyone was eating and singing, Nair was so moved by Sethi’s version of a ghazal famously sung by Khanum, “Dil Jalane Ki Baat,” that she urged him to record it. The song became part of the soundtrack and the first step toward Sethi’s recording career.Storytelling is still inherent to his work. Whether at concerts or on Instagram, Sethi often describes the inclusive nature of traditional South Asian music. Because it’s always been “anciently multiple” and cosmopolitan, it contains the “antibodies,” he says, to heal a divisive culture from within. But there are moments when he wishes to not represent but present for a while. He plans to write another novel, in the more experimental form of lyrical autofiction. Today, the burden of being an ambassador is lightened by the presence of other queer South Asian artists, including the writers Bushra Rehman and Sarah Thankam Mathews, and Sethi’s own partner, the painter Salman Toor. Last year, Sethi appeared at Coachella along with several other South Asian musicians, whose multilingual sets slotted right in alongside the Spanish artist Rosalía and Nigeria’s Burna Boy, who performed in English and their native languages.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      How to Find the One

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      Listen and follow Modern LoveApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music“That film sequence was like a portal into an alternate universe, where a brown girl could date a white guy and still be at peace with her family.”Brian Rea[What’s the most unusual place you have ever gone on a date? Tell us your story, and you may be featured in a future episode. Visit nytimes.com/datestory for submission details.]When Meher Ahmad first saw the movie “Bend It Like Beckham” as a young girl, she was transfixed. Watching the main character, an Indian woman who looked like her, kiss her white soccer coach, she saw a vision of her own romantic future. While she felt pressure from her family and her culture to be with a Pakistani boy, the movie opened up the lanes of her attraction — from white boys to, eventually, “anything but brown men.”As Meher grew older, though, her thinking started to shift. Today, we share her story about how she found “the one.”Then, our host, Anna Martin, discusses a trend that is all over TikTok: romantic manifestation. She speaks with Laura Pitcher, a contributing writer for The New York Times, about how people are manifesting their ideal partners — and why the spiritual practice is so appealing to Gen Z.[What’s the most unusual place you have ever gone on a date? Tell us your story, and you may be featured in a future episode of the podcast. Visit nytimes.com/datestory for submission details.]Hosted by: Anna MartinProduced by: Julia Botero, Hans Buetow and Elyssa DudleyEdited by: Sara SarasohnExecutive Producer: Wendy DorrEngineered by: Dan PowellTheme Music: Dan PowellEssay by: Meher AhmadRead by: Soneela NankaniFounder, Modern Love: Daniel JonesEditor, Modern Love Projects: Miya LeeSpecial thanks: Mahima Chablani, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Julia Simon, Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner and Anna Diamond at Audm.Thoughts? Email us at modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com. More

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      in Movies

      A Pakistani-American Tale Upends Expectations Onscreen and in Life

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Pakistani-American Tale Upends Expectations Onscreen and in LifeIram Parveen Bilal’s “I’ll Meet You There” depicts a parent who supports his daughter’s dream. The filmmaker’s own parents weren’t as sure about her passion.The director Iram Parveen Bilal said, “I was just frustrated with the constant oppressed-Muslim-woman situation that is always pushed forward” in media portrayals.Credit…Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesFeb. 16, 2021, 1:39 p.m. ETIram Parveen Bilal’s newest feature, “I’ll Meet You There,” tells a novel story: A young Pakistani-American woman, Dua (played by Nikita Tewani), wants to pursue a career in dance, a path that would be frowned upon in Pakistan. Instead, her immigrant father, a Chicago police officer named Majeed, encourages her to follow her dream. At the same time, Majeed (Faran Tahir) is ordered to surveil a mosque — essentially to spy on his people, including his father, who has incidentally chosen now to visit from Pakistan.The film’s story lines signal a departure from how Muslims and South Asians have typically been depicted in American cinema: Parents are usually painted as oppressive and rigid. Women are given very little agency. And that’s, of course, assuming the exploration of Islam is not immediately linked to terrorism. Bilal’s film tells a story about being an American Muslim after the Sept. 11 attacks, an experience that can mean a cultural identity clash on multiple fronts.Bilal — who was born in the United States but grew up in Nigeria and Pakistan — wrote the script 10 years ago. But she began to raise financing in earnest in the early days of the Trump presidency. His administration’s travel ban, which affected immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries and has since been rescinded, horrified her and renewed her desire to present Muslims in a different light onscreen. The movie received largely positive reviews when it was selected for South by Southwest last year (before that festival was canceled because of the pandemic). On Friday, the film was released on major streaming platforms.“I do think I was just frustrated with the constant oppressed-Muslim-woman situation that is always pushed forward,” Bilal, 37, said in a recent phone interview, referring to media portrayals in Western television and film. “And all this sort of fresh but nuanced take is exactly why it has been so incredibly hard to get the film financed. Because that is not necessarily, I found, a narrative that was exciting for investors in the system to really support.”How Bilal entered filmmaking itself is a story of defying norms. When she arrived in the United States from Pakistan in 2000 at 17, she had a bright future virtually guaranteed. After qualifying for the Asian Physics Olympiad — an international physics competition — she received a full scholarship to attend the prestigious California Institute of Technology. She went on to earn an environmental science and engineering degree as well as the opportunity to pursue a stable, potentially lucrative career as a scientist — one that would make her South Asian parents, also scientists, proud.Many children of South Asian parents will find Bilal’s trajectory familiar, except for what happened next. She gave it all up after graduating. On a whim, Bilal opted to become a filmmaker, much to the bafflement of her parents, with whom art was never discussed. It was a profession she knew little about, except that she was sure that at heart she was a storyteller, not a scientist. She has since written and directed several short films and two other features.In a phone interview, she discussed her shift from science to filmmaking, and “I’ll Meet You There.” Here are edited excerpts:Nikita Tewani in a scene from “I’ll Meet You There.”Credit…Level ForwardWhen you were growing up, were your parents pressuring you to pursue science?My parents [started] from scratch. Their parents migrated from British India to Pakistan in the Partition and left everything. My father’s father ended up setting up a mechanic and auto workshop, and my mom’s father was a postmaster. For them, education was everything.How did they react to you leaving science to pursue filmmaking?They just weren’t sure that I was going to be able to make ends meet. My mother very clearly said filmmakers and people in this industry only succeed based on who they know and how much money they have. And she said, “We don’t know anybody.”Did your parents disapprove?My mother definitely disapproved, I think, for a really long time. She’d be sitting with the aunties and everybody would be talking about how their kids went to school and are now pursuing engineering or whatever corporate [job] — and she would just be like, “Yeah, Iram went to Caltech,” and then there would be silence. But now I think she’s understanding it, and they’re proud. It’s also just hard for them to understand what success is. For them, success is an Oscar.How has your science background informed your filmmaking?I fundamentally believe that the artist’s mind and the scientist’s mind are very similar because both are bent upon curiosity.In terms of the father-daughter relationship in the film, did you purposely try to subvert the expectations of what audiences have come to expect of South Asian depictions?The fact is that there are a lot of fathers out there in the world who are extremely sweet and positive to their daughters, and this exists. Even the grandfather, he’s still a very soft and sweet man. And I was kind of tired of seeing that narrative. I don’t think it was a conscious thing: “Oh OK, here’s that theme, let’s make it kind of the opposite.” I just think it was always another thing that I’ve often struggled with, that I feel that sometimes women have been conditioned to push the patriarchy more.What impact do you think the film can have today, especially after the Trump presidency?Anti-Muslim bigotry is very much present; communities of color are having to protect [themselves] even more in terms of surveillance. And the fact that this is a family that is just like yours — [the film can] basically humanize and connect so you don’t think of Muslims as unicorns, but they’re actually just like people you would know, like your neighbors. So we’re just hoping to provide another data point of what it means to be Muslim-American and hopefully create more similarities.Because at the bottom of all of this, this is a story about a family trying to reconnect. Yes, they happen to be Muslim. But it’s about secrets, it’s about intergenerational trauma, conflict, those things.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More