Rahat Fateh Ali

Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (b. 1974 in Faisalabad, Pakistan) is a musician, and primarily, a singer of Qawwali, a devotional music of the Sufis. He is the grandson of the late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In addition to Qawwali, he also performs ghazals and other light music. He has toured extensively and performed in Pakistan, India and all around the world.

Traditionally, Qawwali has been a family business. Rahat's family has an unbroken tradition of performing Qawwali for more than 600 years. Rahat took over the family Qawwali party after Nusrat's death in 1997. (Nusrat had formally nominated Rahat as his successor during his lifetime).

Biography

He was born in 1974 in Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan into a family of traditional musicians. The son of Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat was trained rigorously by his uncle Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the art of classical music and Qawwali, as Nusrat had no son of his own. A gifted child, he started his musical training at a very early age. In an interview, his father Farrukh has spoken of how Rahat would be receiving musical instruction from Nusrat with a pacifier in his mouth.

Under the tutelage of his uncle, his first public performance was at the age of eleven. He can be seen in numerous videos alongside his father and uncle in recordings from the 1980s and 1990s. His voice is high-pitched, unlike the huskier tenor voice of Nusrat. After two decades of captivating performances for international audiences, Rahat is a star in his own right.

Soundtracks and other projects in the United States

In a subordinate role with his uncle Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, working in collaboration with Eddie Vedder, of the American rock band, Pearl Jam, Rahat contributed to the soundtrack of the 1995 Hollywood film Dead Man Walking.

In 2002, he worked on the soundtrack of Four Feathers in collaboration with the American composer of orchestral and film music, James Horner.

Also in 2002, Rahat guested with The Derek Trucks Band on the song "Maki Madni" for Trucks' album, Joyful Noise.

Solo career

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan released his brand new album called Charkha in 2008, and it is doing good business in the market: hit songs like Kanday Utay and Tere Bina are already topping Asian Music Charts.