Rizwan and Muazzam Ali Khan were never meant to be musicians. Although they are the nephews of the Qawwali great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, their father was keen for them to focus on their education. It was only when a local Sufi shrine in Lahore invited them to perform that he discovered that the boys had been winning singing competitions at school and regionally. The brothers were then taken under the wing of their uncle. Like him, they made a mixture of traditional albums and collaborations with western producers and musicians — Jah Wobble adds dubby bass to 2001’s People’s Colony No 1, their most sonically innovative recording.
At the Feet of the Beloved sees the brothers return to Real World after several decades, and revives the traditional sound of a Qawwal party: harmonium drones, a steady pulse of handclaps rising and falling in intensity, tablas poised for firecracker explosions and voices raining down devotions both divine and secular.
The album’s four tracks are each more than 10 minutes in length, giving the music time to breathe and expand. “Meherban” and “Saqi Ik Jaam” are based on Urdu ghazals. The former is a song of devotion and submission: “O Gracious One,” sing the brothers, “since You are gracious to me/In no circumstance do I ever find myself forsaken. For I know that You are the refuge of the helpless and the abandoned.” The second ghazal is more discursive, riffing on repeated requests for a real or metaphorical cup of wine, working up into a froth of wordless vocalisations.
In Punjabi, “Ja Mur Ja” and “Yaar Da Muhallah” are more explicitly religious, the former invoking Islamic saints and prophets, and the latter closing the album with images of the singers’ own private Kaaba, the holiest site in Mecca. The doubled voices take turns, overlap, dispute and ultimately reach harmony.
★★★★☆
‘At the Feet of the Beloved’ is released by Real World