I t so happened that the of Shah Abdul Lateef Bhitai and the of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan fell within a weeks of each other this year. In their unique ways the two have been responsible for making music a popular and authentic medium of artistic expression. The celebrations were held at Bhit Shah last week.
has been a major form of expression for the last seven hundred years at the Sufi shrines of the subcontinent. Some of the developments in the genre are attributed to Amir Khusro and Shah Lateef, who in a way codified the music in Sindh. No wonder his shrine has been a major centre of musical expression ranging from the to the .
Nusrat was popular hugely within the country as well as in the rest of the subcontinent because of the variations he introduced and the range of the innovations he brought about in the formal and the Punjabi folk . His worldwide popularity and the extent of it are however not that simple to understand or explain. It so happens perhaps that a great artist arrives at the right time and conquers the world with his creativity.
The true nature and range of the creativity is essentially inscrutable. Nusrat was born in a traditional family. His ancestors, including his father, Fateh Ali, and his uncle, Mubarak, Ali were respected by musicians, particularly the exponents of the and .
Their brother, Salamat Ali, was a great harmonium player. However, his talent as an instrumentalist has not been as well appreciated owing to the bias towards vocal music in our tr.