Occasioned by the release of ‘Chain of Light,’ I pen these words as an NFAK fan; as someone whose office door is adorned by a picture of Nusrat with his right arm stretched to the heavens, and his face contorted to the demands of his craft. I want to pay homage to the master by reflecting on how he informs my own craft, which is teaching and writing on philosophy and religion.

One of the undergraduate courses I teach regularly is on hermeneutics, a branch of philosophy that explores the different ways we make sense of and interpret texts we read, experiences we inhabit, and people we encounter. One of the big hitters of hermeneutical theory is Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 – 2002). Gadamer is famous for rehabilitating the concept of “tradition” in Western philosophical thought. We, too, like the thinkers Gadamer argues against, might hear and read the word “tradition” and construe it as a way of evoking the past, of valorizing the customary and the conventional, of naming those dimensions of our social worlds that are resistant to change and innovation. We might conjure up images of anchors or moorings or, if we’re in a less charitable mood, of chains and shackles. Against the backdrop of such conceptions of tradition, Gadamer’s provocation is: “To be situated within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it possible.” For Gadamer, tradition is a way of naming and evoking our historical, linguistic, and cultural situatedness, a way to signal the “horizon” and “vantage point,” out of which we work out our relations with texts, each other, and the world.

What’s all this got to do with Nusrat? Gadamer’s point is that to be an heir to a tradition is to relate with one’s inheritance as something to be loved and mastered. And the pinnacle of being traditioned, of ustādī, is the discovery of one’s unique, inimitable voice.

Enter Nusrat.

Nusrat typifies that the “genius” – if we’ll permit ourselves to use this musty word for a minute – isn’t a solitary figure, alienated from their tribe. Instead, genius and mastery are functions of exploring and deepening our relationship with particular, historically situated crafts, skills, or habits, and to contribute to their vitality and push their limits. “Tradition is not simply a permanent precondition; rather, we produce it ourselves in as much as we understand, participate in the evolution of tradition, and hence further determine it ourselves,” Gadamer avers. Nusrat’s interviews are evidence that he self-consciously worked to both preserve and reimagine the musical legacy bequeathed to him. He spoke of being heir to a 600-year long musical heritage - with his father, Fateh Ali Khan, more partial to Dhrupad, and his uncle Mubarik Ali Khan more inclined toward Khayāl music. Nusrat speaks of how his initial qawwalis imitated his father and uncle’s style, but he fairly quickly gave up on this approach . Because he couldn’t imagine how he might develop his own, unique voice if he imitated them instead of building on them. “So, I innovated a little,” says Nusrat , “and included folk elements, a more romantic style, and simplified my compositions.”

Nusrat also actively sought to expand the reach of his musical heritage to a younger and Western audience. One one occasion, he talks about how his western audience enjoys improvisation and more fast-paced beats, elements that he incorporated in his music. “Our music is close to their jazz music,” Nusrat opined, as he collaborated with musicians and performed for audiences previously unfamiliar with qawwali.

For my purposes in the classroom, Nusrat and his mind-bendingly versatile range – including Bollywood soundtracks and Hollywood scores – exemplifies that masterful innovation is the preserve of those who do the labor of embodying, exploring, and expanding their roots and traditions.

The second way I rely on Nusrat in my teaching is to demonstrate Gadamer’s concept of “play.” To help us in the classroom get a visceral, in-your-bones sense of what Gadamer means by play, we turn to the 27th minute of a 1988 live rendition of Nī Meyṉ Jānā Jogī De Nāl , where a sky-blue sweater clad, mustached, wide-eyed, sweating Nusrat unleashes a tān. Gadamer uses the word “play” to name the processes at work when we engage in a genuine conversation with a work of art. The hallmark of play is immersion: “Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in play.” Nusrat’s absorption in the tān is an in-your-face example of Gadamer’s claims about the transformative power of art: transformative for both the artist and the audience, captivated by the artwork. The experience of interpreting a work of art is the experience of being absorbed, compelled, and captured. The experience of art – whether as its creator or beholder – is one where we aren’t fully in control, capable of formulating a commanding and calculated relation with it. Anyone who has experienced Nusrat break into a tān or a paltā has a sense of what Gadamer is trying to get at when he says: “All playing is a being-played. The attraction of a game…consists precisely in the fact that the game masters the players.” The tān plays Nusrat as much as he plays the tān, and we who are privileged to be in his audience are moved and “played-with” by his music.

Does the recently released ‘Chain of Light,’ a collection of four previously unheard Nusrat numbers, recorded in 1990 by Real World Studies, move me? For me, Nusrat has been as much a visual experience as it is sonic. I’ve grown up hearing and watching DVD and YouTube recordings of his concerts, imagining myself as one of the audience, replaying parts that draw me in countless times, marveling at the voice, the sound, the gestures, the way the party coordinates itself as an organism. ‘Chain of Light,’ as a record, of course doesn’t have the sort of visceral quality that a concert recording possesses.

Although I suspect I’m not alone in receiving NFAK as an audio-visual experience, the reason I’ve just given for not being captivated by ‘Chain of Light’ might be a function of my own peculiar tastes. The larger issue at play is that ‘Chain of Light’ is vintage, classic, reliable, ‘good old’ Nusrat. And the addition of these four songs to his corpus, or my experience of his corpus, doesn’t really add to it - or take away from it - in any meaningful way. Am I glad that I get to hear something “novel” by Nusrat “at the height of his powers”? Sure. But I’m suspicious of my delight: there’s a voracious, almost gluttonous quality to it. I suspect almost every Nusrat fan laments his early death, and has imagined what might-have-been, and how his musical powers and talents may have evolved and heightened over time. I’ve certainly entertained this thought. But I also balk at the narcissistic and extractive character of this way of thinking about an artist’s body of work. Although I haven’t seen it myself, a friend who has seen bits of the upcoming biographical documentary on Nusrat titled Ustad relates that perhaps sometimes the master, too, felt that he was reduced to a music-generating machine.

I don’t think I’m committed to the position that posthumously released work is, by definition, insignificant, a non-essential supplement to an artist’s legacy. For instance, if ‘Chain of Light’ comprised, not of vintage Nusrat, but more exploratory, atypical, and experimental work by him, I imagine I would’ve received it differently. Case in point, a recording I recently discovered of Nusrat performing a traditional khayāl piece. ‘Chain of Light’ exemplifies rather than amplifying and expanding Nusrat’s corpus.

The album’s redeeming quality is that it advances one of Nusrat’s most cherished goals: making his musical tradition accessible and relevant to new audiences. The album’s release is an occasion and invitation for another generation to connect with qawwali and discover Nusrat’s magic.