COMPOSERS: Sufi Music from Pakistan
LABELS: Nonesuch Explorer
PERFORMER: The Sabri Brothers and ensemble
CATALOGUE NO: 7559-72080-2
The urgent, competitive vocals of a qawaali event, the intense religious-cum-secular emotion (impossible to disentangle), the thrilling build-ups combine to make ecstatics of everybody.
While the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan famously popularised this once-rare subcontinental form, other fine musicians have made their international mark, none more than the Sabri Brothers – also sadly depleted in recent years, so that Nonesuch’s release of a powerful 1978 New York recording is one to snap up. An over-discreet box contains four exciting tracks, not apparently recorded in public but with the charged atmosphere of a live performance.