The American magazine Rolling Stone has placed the late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (NFAK) has been named as of the 200 Best Singers of All Time, and Pakistanis are incredibly proud.
He was ranked 91st on the list which also includes Jeon Jungkook of BTS, South Korean singer-songwriter IU, late Indian vocalist Lata Mangeshkar, and Canadian singer, The Weeknd.
An article in the new year edition of Rolling Stone read:
Watching archival performances of the late Pakistani vocal master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — an icon in the realm of Qawwali, a type of Sufi devotional song, whose family’s musical legacy stretched back hundreds of years — it’s easy to lose track of time, and to hear how his music easily reached global audiences in the eighties when he began performing abroad and recording for Peter Gabriel’s Real World label.
The article highlighted NFAK’s ability to win hearts everywhere in the world.
“His many famous fans included Madonna, Eddie Vedder (who duetted with him on the Dead Man Walking soundtrack), and Jeff Buckley (who called the singer “my Elvis” and studied Urdu in order to properly cover him).”
The article ended with NFAQ’s quote from an interview in 1996 (a year before he died): “When I sing, I sing with the depth of my heart.”
The Nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar took the 84th spot on the list. Rolling Stones defined her as an “empress of playback singers,” “the Melody Queen,” and “the cornerstone of Indian pop music.”
It added,
The Melody Queen’s crystalline, endlessly feminine voice is a cornerstone of Indian pop music, with a global impact disseminated via Bollywood cinema, whose golden age she defined.
