David Dalle
Thursday August 15th, 2024 with David Dalle
30 for 30 with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Sheikh Yasin Al-Tuhami.

We will continue celebrating my 30 years on-air at CKCU with 30 of the most significant albums in my musical evolution. This week, the great Sufi singers! Of course, anyone familiar with my show knew Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan would be showing up among the 30 albums. Sometime around 1994, I found the 1991 Real World album "Shahbaaz" in CKCU's library and gave it a listen. I was immediately entranced. Nusrat would quickly become a fundamental cornerstone of music for me. It was not just because his music is beautiful, intense, passionate, and often fusing traditional Qawwali with Hindustani Khyal improvisation in incredible performances. It is also because Nusrat changed the way I looked at music. I realized that the Sufi approach to music (for Sufis who use music, not all Sufi traditions use music in their practice), using music as a way to achieve spiritual ecstasy, a union with the divine, was the understanding I needed for music. It made me look at all music differently. I believe it gave me a deeper understanding of most musical traditions including European classical from Bach to Beethoven, Liszt, Bruckner--all of it. Sadly, only a couple of years after discovering Nusrat, at the height of his international fame and constant touring, he died on August 16th, 1997. News could be a lot slower back then, and I only heard of his death while I was doing my show. Since then, Nusrat has been intimately linked to my radio program, and we celebrate his music every year around August 16th. After my Earth shattering encounter with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I began to search for any and all Sufi music. The traditions vary incredibly throughout the Islamic world, often with different traditions within the same culture, such as the many different types of Sufi music in Morocco. Many traditions are still virtually unknown outside their cultural home. One of these is the Sufi Inshad of Egypt. It is very popular among the general populace in Egypt, and, especially in a brilliant exponent such as Sheikh Yasin Al-Tuhami, and is the equal of any of the greatest music I know. Despite being at the pinnacle of this popular tradition in Egypt, Yasin Al-Tuhami is unknown outside of Egypt, there are only two extant commercial international releases, one of them being a short excerpt recorded at the Fes Festival in Morocco. The other is a live recording from a concert in Paris from 1998. In the Paris concert, he sings one of his typical, yet miraculous, unmetered improvisations, ringing every ounce of emotion from the chosen Maqam. He sings a mystic poem by 13th century Sufi poet Umar Ibn al-Farid, recounting the suffering and distress of the poet who is separated from the divine, a common theme of Sufi poetry, often presented in metaphorical terms where the divine is the beloved. He is accompanied by three melodic instruments, oud, qanun, nay which improvise introductions to, and embellishments of, Al-Tuhami's voice. He sings the poem in four large sections, each one swelling like a massive wave, each one being brought to an even higher, more intense emotional and spiritual ecstasy. An almost unbearable level of tension is reached by the end of the poem, when it is all released in a short Dhikr where powerful percussion and rhythm is introduced, though these Dhikrs can last an hour or more in their original ritualistic context. Al-Tuhami usually performs over 200 times a year, but mostly in Sufi religious contexts, standing outside the Western concept of concerts. This is typical of many Sufi traditions, which I believe is part of the reason so many of these traditions are so little known. He does have many live recordings released in Egypt of which I have about a dozen. The 30 for 30 albums heard so far: 1. Lustmord "The Monstrous Soul" Side Effects 2. Ludwig Van Beethoven/Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert Von Karajan et al. "Symphony No. 9" Deutsche Grammophon 3. Doudou N'Diaye Rose "Djabote" Realworld 4. Julius Eastman/Lutoslawski Piano Duo with Joanna Duda, Mischa Kozlowski "Unchained" Dux 5. The Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar "Apocalypse Across The Sky" Axiom 6. Ustad Bismillah Khan & Party "Shehnai Recital" EMI India 7. Franz Liszt/Claudio Arrau "12 Etudes d'exécution transcendante" Philips 8. Ludwig Van Beethoven transcribed Franz Liszt/Cyprien Katsaris "Symphony No. 9" Teldec 9. Malek Masoudi "Mandir" Shahram 10. Shahram Nazeri "Aatash Dar Neystaan" Shahram 11. Kayhan Kalhor "Scattering Stars Like Dust" Traditional Crossroads 12. Goran Bregovic "Underground" Polygram 13. Kocani Orkestar "A Gypsy Brass Band" Long Distance 14. Misia "Garras Dos Sentidos" Erato 15. Goran Bregovic & Alkistis Protopsalti "Paradehtika" Polygram 16. Tabu Ley Rochereau "Muzina" Rounder 17. Kronos Quartet "Pieces of Africa" Nonesuch 18. Toumani Diabate & Ballake Sissoko "New Ancient Strings" Rykodisc 19. Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra "Boulevard de L'independance" World Circuit 20. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Party "Shahbaaz" Realworld 21. Sheikh Yasin Al-Tuhami "The Magic of the Sufi Inshad" Long Distance