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Playlist.
August 19, 2004

ARTIST	SONG/ALBUM	COUNTRY	LABEL	YEAR
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan	“Mera Vichhadeya Yaar” from “Mera Vichhadeya Yaar”	Pakistan	SCI	2001
Whirling Dervishes of Konya	from “Hamdulillah”	Turkey	Sounds True	1998
Sheikh Yasin Al-Tuhami	“Labbayka” from “The Magic of the Sufi Inshad”	Egypt	Long Distance	1998
Ostad Elahi	“Supplique d’Ali” from “Celestial Harmonies”	Iran	Chant du Monde
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan	“Haq Ali Ali” from “Live at Royal Albert Hall”	Pakistan	MIL	1998

Today I had my annual Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan tribute show. I chose a simple theme, great recordings of Sufi music. I started with a lengthy piece from Nusrat, a piece I only heard recently, and a sign that fortunately there are still many many recordings by Nusrat I have yet to hear. A small compensation for his too short time among us. A tremendous live recording by a Sufi ensemble from Konya creates a thread back to the legendary Jalal Al-Din Al-Rumi, who is often credited with making music an important part of Sufism. From the rather formal performance of the Whirling Dervishes, we move to whom I consider Nusrat’s Arabic equal, the great Egytian Munshid Sheikh Yasin Al-Tuhami. He, like Nusrat, uses his extensive vocal resources, improvisation, and complete mastery over the structure of the piece to create intense emotional dramas. We need more recordings of Yasin Al-Tuhami available in the west. The lack of them is shameful. We continue with another distant thread linking the great Kurdish mystic Ostad Elahi, perhaps a recent example of the music which helped inspire Mohiuddin Chisti, at the root of the Qawwali tradition seven centuries ago. After Ostad Elahi’s prayer to Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad, we hear Nusrat in his hommage. One of his most popular pieces, heard here in a sublime live recording which has superb examples of Nusrat’s classical Sargam. It would be hard to find three hours of better music!