Re: Nusrat’s nephew in hollywood MelGibson’s movie…
If Pakistan’s conservative classes had just heard their brand ambassador, the 30-something Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, foremost proponent of a Sufi devotional music called the qawwali that is hugely popular in the Indian subcontinent, speak at the Indian Women’s Press Corps in New Delhi last week, they would have clutched their heads in dismay.
"No one understands my music better than people in India,‘’ said young Rahat, nephew of the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and anointed successor to his legacy, adding, "I love singing here. I have sung everywhere, from Hindi films to private parties. I believe that my music is above politics, it joins hearts that have been divided by years of prejudice and animosity between India and Pakistan.‘’
Clearly, even Rahat had noticed that despite the killings in Kashmir, none other than the cultural arm of India’s Foreign Office, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) had invited him to New Delhi last week to perform his first concert of the Indian season in collaboration with the women journalists club.
So much so that India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee took time out to attend the concert. Clearly, too, Mukherjee understood the importance of not only projecting India as a "soft power’’ abroad, a phrase much in use these days, but also emphasising that India’s strength also lay in the fact that it had always, over the centuries, been so open to foreign influences.
Perhaps, we can call it India’s "Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’’ factor. For better or worse, the young singer has been welcomed with open arms by Bollywood, for unknown sums of money.
Sure, for the time being, Rahat is really living off his legendary’s uncle’s extraordinary musical legacy. The time is not far off when other Pakistani and Indian artistes who perform in Hindi/Urdu will either swamp him because he won’t be able to live off the Nusrat name any longer or just gape in astonishment at his expanding repertoire.