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His master's voice

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's unconventional voice led this commerce graduate away from all the trodden career paths to become a Sufi singer

Syed Adil Husseini has had the good fortune of learning from two very original musicians, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali and Ustad Rashid Khan. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

YOU CAN'T miss the original master's chaap as Syed Adil Husseini sings Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's famous "Sajna tere bina... ". It's there in every sargam and alap he negotiates. And every second sentence he speaks also has a reference to the qawwali king who gave the traditional form a world market. "He is inimitable," says Adil. "It's because of him that I became a Sufi singer."

The 25-year-old commerce graduate from Hyderabad decided to leave alone all the trodden paths and become a Sufi singer because Nusrat's music overwhelmed him so much that he didn't want to do anything but become "like him". Adil isn't from a traditional family of qawwali singers and has no musical background to speak of. His parents aremusic lovers, though.

"Whatever talent I have is atai and not virasi," says Adil. He explains that atai is what is God-given, as opposed to virasi, which you pick up from your environment. Adil doesn't have a gharana he can name as his own. Not that he has any regrets about it. "Gharane se kya karna?" he asks. "I would probably have been forced to stick to a style and gharana if I was born in a traditional qawwali family. Being not part of a musical heritage meant not having a ready launch pad. But the advantage, by default, is that there are not too many restrictions on what I can and can't do."

Small troupe

So, Adil's troupe is much smaller than a traditional qawwali troupe. And unlike his role model who mastered the form and then decided to experiment with it by mixing Western musical idiom in it, thereby giving qawwali an international flavour, Adil's brand of music is already very international. Besides the usual harmonium and tabla, his concert stage has a keyboard, a drum kit and a guitar. Some traditionalists would call this "corruption", but Adil argues that the form itself, both as a philosophy and a discipline, can embrace everything and still hold its own. "Western idiom also fits in precisely because Sufi tradition is broad enough to accommodate all."

Disciplined training

But even as he talks about openness and experimentation, Adil does acknowledge that some disciplined musical training would do him good in the long run. He was the shagird of Nusrat when he was in Mumbai for sometime, but the maestro passed away before Adil could pick up enough. For the last one year, Adil has been learning Hindustani classical music from Rampur-Sahaswan gharana maestro, Ustad Rashid Khan. "I travel to Calcutta once a month to meet him. And then he gives me homework," he says. You notice that he is as starry-eyed about Rashid Khan as he is about Nusrat. "He is born to sing. He doesn't want money or publicity. Rashid Khanji is in the market today only because of his wife who takes care of the practical aspects," says Adil, every word spelling admiration. Comparing him to other musicians whom he would rather not name, he says about Rashid: "Bhari hui cheez awaaz nahin karti."

But Adil himself more in tune with the times as he says: "Waqt riyaz karte baitne ke nahin hain. These are fast times, you need to move on." He insists that Nusrat himself believed in this credo.

But isn't he a little wary of being dubbed Nusrat's clone and never have an identity of his own? "I hope my tape of Iqbal's compositions I'm working on will give me an identity of my own," says Adil. He might soon be flying to Texas to teach Ethnomusicology at the university there as well. "Bahut nervous hoon," he says. "I don't know how I am going to teach with my English!"

Maybe he should just sing. After all, his audience refused to go back home after his concert at Bangalore Habba!

BAGESHREE S.

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