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Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: Mustt Mustt

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Real World Records
Released: 1990
Time:
 49:43
Category: Qawwali
Producer(s): Michael Brook
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.michaelbrookmusic.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Mustt Mustt [Lost in His Work] (N.F.A.Khan) - 5:15
[2] Nothing Without You [Tery Bina] (N.F.A.Khan) - 5:04
[3] Tracery (M.Brook) - 4:48
[4] The Game (R.Ahwai/M.Brook/N.F.A.Khan) - 4:59
[5] Taa Deem (N.F.A.Khan) - 4:47
[6] Sea of Vapours (M.Brook) - 3:55
[7] Fault Lines (M.Brook) - 4:13
[8] Tana Dery Na (M.Brook/N.F.A.Khan) - 4:23
[9] Shadow (N.F.A.Khan) - 3:04
[10] Avenue (M.Brook) - 4:51
[11] Mustt Mustt [Massive Attack remix] (N.F.A.Khan) - 4:24

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Vocals

Michael Brook - Guitar on [1-3,7,8], Bass on [2], Djembe on [4], Infinitve Guitar on [4-6,10], Mixing, Percussion on [8], Producer, Surdu on [5], Synthesizer on [6,8]
David Bottrill - Djembe on [1], Editing on [9], Engineer, Mixing, Surdu on [8], Synthesizer on [6]
Robert Ahwai - Guitar on [1,2,3,4,10]
Darryl Johnson - Bass on [1], Moog Synthesizer on [2], Moog Bass Pedals on [4,5,7], Piano on [4], Djembe on [5], Buzz Bass on [6], Clay Drums on [10]
James Pinker - Bongos, Djembe on [1], Drums, Percussion on [7], Hairy Drum on [2], Gong Bass on [3], Bongos on [4], Djembe on [5,10]
Guo Yue - Flute
Peter Gabriel - Drums
Dildar Hussein - Tablas on [2,3,7,8,10]
Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan - Harmonium, Vocals

Richard Blair - Assistant Engineer
Massive Attack - Mixing, Remixing
David Buckland - Photography
Malcolm Garrett - Art Direction, Design
Russell Mills - Cover Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1990 CD Virgin Records - 0777 7 86221 2 3
1990 CD Real World Records - 0777 7 86221 2 3

Recorded and mixed at Real World Studios, England.

Dieser Klassiker aus dem Jahr 1990 sorgt heute noch dafür, dass viele Menschen sich in die schwerelose Stimme des pakistanischen Sängers Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan verlieben. Jeff Buckley beschrieb ihn einst als "meinen Elvis", und mit "Mustt Mustt" öffnete er gemeinsam mit dem Gitarristen und Produzenten Michael Brook die Tür zu dem betörenden Klang von Qawwali, der Musik der Sufis. Obendrauf gibt es einen Remix des Titeltracks von Massive Attack.



The late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is today acknowledged as the great master of Qawwali who popularised this beautiful and inspirational music beyond Muslim peoples to a worldwide audience and into a whole new musical territory. Mustt Mustt shows Nusrat's willingness to experiment with his music - to strive for new ideas and to listen to new styles - and to create more contemporary albums that could sit alongside the traditional collection.

In their Qawwali performances, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party had begun to modify their style to suit the audience. Around the time this album was released, 1990, the Asian younger generation didn't bother with Qawwali - it bored them and was too slow. They wanted faster beats. 'I made my own style.' said Nusrat, 'We update Qawwali with the times.'

Nusrat was happy to experiment on this album - he was always striving for new ideas, just as he was always listening to new styles of music. This, however, didn't mean Nusrat would stick entirely to modern techniques - traditional albums like Shahen-Shah (RW3) and those recorded in Pakistan would continue to be made.

The opening song, 'Mustt Mustt', draws upon various devotional lyrics about a particular Sufi saint, upon which Nusrat has then improvised. While 'Tery Bina' is a romantic song, based upon the Qawwali style, in which a lover claims: 'I cannot live peacefully without you for even a moment. I miss you terribly when you are away.'

These are the only two songs with actual lyrics; the rest are classical vocal exercises in which the words have no meaning but are used for the quality of their sound. These notations are selected to fit particular ragas. The generic term for them is tarana, of which there are many different kinds.

'Music is an international language,' said Nusrat, pointing out that words are unnecessary to appreciate his music.

Producer Michael Brook emphasised that they had no real communication difficulties. 'You have language problems, but in fact you need a very simple vocabulary to talk about music if you're playing it.' He was surprised by 'the mutual enthusiasm of Nusrat and all the musicians. Everyone was excited there really was a collaboration and that's all we could have hoped for...'

Instruments from different continents were used, like the big Brazilian drum - the surdu, and the Senegalese djembe, alongside Indian tabla and harmonium, plus bass, keyboards and Michael's invention, the 'infinite guitar'. The project also mixed musicians from different cultures. Michael from Canada, Nusrat, Farrukh and Dildar from Pakistan, Robert Ahwai culturally West Indian, Darryl Johnson from New Orleans, James Pinker from New Zealand. As Michael pointed out, 'Although is wasn't painless - it worked.'

'I'd really hoped we could show a more delicate side of Nusrat's singing. I love all the fireworks and the heavy metal solos that he does, but I thought it would be nice to bring out a slower, more introspective component,' explained Michael.

Different tracks came about in different ways. 'Fault Lines' was changed a lot after it was recorded, with the basic pattern becoming a small part of the track. 'Sea of Vapours', like other tracks, had the 'infinite guitar' added afterwards because of time constraints. By contrast 'Avenue' has everyone playing live. 'The Game' started from a drum pattern donated by Peter Gabriel. 'Tracery' has nine beats in one cycle and eleven in another cycle. 'Nusrat liked the challenge of that. He is an amazing musician. The whole chorus line fits perfectly and feels very natural. The palette he has to choose from is mind-bogglingly large,' Michael commented.

When the melodic phrase of a Qawwali, or devotional song, is repeated, it conveys the meaning of the accompanying lyrics even when the words are not sung. 'A lot of the tracks were much longer so we shortened things, cut phrases out, moved the voice around, repeated sections and joined sections together.' This is where the only problem arose. 'We made some edits that were not acceptable to Nusrat, because we'd cut a phrase in half - sometimes there were actually lyrics that we made nonsense of. Sometimes even though they were just singing Sa Re Ga we had interfered with the meaning of the phrase.' A compromise was achieved - important lyrical phrases were restored without losing the musical structure Michael had developed.

So a halfway point was reached between east and west in songwriting, in performance, and in attitude.

Drawn from interviews by Helen M. Jerome
RealWorld.com



Michael’s first collaboration became an early benchmark of the then-burgeoning world music genre; the sessions for Mustt Mustt found Brook adopting new approaches to studio recording. Putting Michael together with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the foremost exponent of the Pakistani devotional singing known as qawwal, was initially the idea of Peter Gabriel, at whose Real World studio facility the sessions took place. With David Bottrill engineering, Michael embarked on an intensive four day session with Nusrat, the pair learning how to collaborate in spite of each man’s inability to speak the other’s language.

Mustt Mustt, the ‘East meets West’ album that resulted, began to garner strong critical notices due in part to the inclusion of Massive Attack’s remix of the title track (the only single sung in Urdu to chart in the U.K., to that point in time). The album’s influence would continue to be felt during the ‘90s; its performances inspired the likes of Jeff Buckley, and its alloy of centuries-old songcraft and electronic texture pointed the way for later work by Talvin Singh and other producers of the U.K.’s Asian Underground movement.

MichaelBrookMusic.com



When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomehni banned all music in Iran and declared it to be sacrilegious, his views by no means reflected the outlook of all Muslims. In fact, Islam's Sufi sect believes music to be a sacred and necessary element of spiritual life. Like Hindus, the Sufis passionately encourage meditation, dancing and chanting. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is a master of traditional Qawwali, the music of the Sufis. Soulful and hypnotic, Khan's passionate singing on these songs of praise underscores the richness and vitality of Sufi culture. While Qawwali music goes back centuries, the use of synthesizers adds a modern edge to the highly absorbing Mustt Mustt.

Alex Henderson - All Music Guide



The late, great Pakistani Qawwali singer's first collaboration with producer/guitarist Michael Brook took the passionate, gymnastic tenor out of tradition and into trip-hop nation. Recorded at Peter Gabriel's expansive Real World Studios, the album combines ethnic percussion, programmed beats (some by Gabriel himself), Brook's atmospheric and infinite guitar swells, and loop-based motifs with Khan's complex, ornamented vocal delivery and devotional lyrics. On the later Night Song, Brook and Khan perfected their cross-cultural dialogue, though Mustt, with its fiery vocal runs and funky, ethereal production, has become an important touchstone in the ethno-techno movement that includes Transglobal Underground and Loop Guru.

James Rotondi - Amazon.com



Diese erste Zusammenarbeit des großen verstorbenen pakistanischen Qawwali-Sängers mit dem Gitarristen und Produzenten Michael Brook war ein erster Versuch des leidenschaftlich-flexiblen Tenors, vom Feld der Tradition auf das Gebiet der TripHop-Nation zu wechseln. Das Album - aufgenommen in Peter Gabriels Real World Studios - kombiniert ethnische Perkussion, programmierte Beats (einige von Gabriel selbst), Brooks stimmungsvoll anschwellende Gitarrenlinien und geloopte Melodiekürzel mit Khans komplex ornamentiertem Gesang und frommen Texten. Auf dem später aufgenommenen Night Song haben Khan und Brooks ihren interkulturellen Dialog perfektioniert, aber Mustt Mustt mit seinen feurigen Gesangslinien und der gleichermaßen funky wie ätherischen Produktion gilt inzwischen als Meilenstein des Ethno- Techno-Crossover und als wichtiger Bezugspunkt beispielsweise für Loop Guru und Transglobal Underground.

James Rotondi - Amazon.de



Mustt Mustt is the first Qawwali fusion album collaboration between singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and guitarist and producer Michael Brook, although the album itself is credited purely to Khan. It was rock musician Peter Gabriel who suggested that Brook and Khan work together. It was released in 1990 on Gabriel's Real World Records label.

This album, along with Night Song, contributed tracks to the remix album Star Rise.

The song "Mustt Mustt" was remixed by British trip hop group Massive Attack and was a club hit in the United Kingdom, being the first song in Urdu to reach the British charts. It was later used in an advert for Coca Cola.

Mustt Mustt was voted one of the Top 100 albums of the 1990s by American music magazine Alternative Press. It reached #14 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums chart in 1991. David Lynch of the The Austin Chronicle called the album a "seminal fusion". British musician Nitin Sawhney said that it "changed the face of British music forever". It was considered a "secularized" or "Western" version of Khan's other Qawwali albums

Wikipedia.org



...ecstatic quality of Nusrat's voice...
You don't have to understand the foreign tongues to appreciate the ecstatic quality of Nusrat's voice, as he chops up words and phrases in long, flowing linest. As a bonus, the reissue includes Massive Attack's famous trip-hop remix of the title track, which became the first record sung in Urdu to make the British charts.

Hi-Fi Choice - Real World Gold (UK)


...one of the great East-West fusion releases...
...a beguiling mixture of electronics, harmoniums and tabla, Brazilian percussion, Guo Yue's Chinese flute, guitar and the master's soaring vocals.'

John Clewley (UK)
 

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