In Praise of Non-Idealness/Non-Idleness: Mekaal Hasan’s Night of Song

Western classical musicians often and avid listeners of the art form with even more fidelity, regard great compositions as sacrosanct artistic statements. Alfred Brendel, a highly revered pianist once told the BBC in an interview: “If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like or the composer what he ought to have written.” Another illuminating perspective comes from Anders Edenroth of The Real Group’s (a highly respected a cappella/jazz ensemble) interview with WHRB speaks to the care required when arranging or covering older songs. Edenroth explains: “Arranging a piece of music is different in a way that you need to maintain respect for the original composer and composition,” if too many changes are made, “the song is sort of gone and has disappeared”, so keeping the essence is crucial​ along with having “respect for your predecessors”. Some rock and popular music artists have likewise voiced strong opinions about not tampering with beloved songs or albums without good cause. However, some like the iconic Bob Dylan, who is not fond of other musicians taking his songs “left field somewhere”, have also praised and preferred others’ renditions of their songs. In this case, the appreciation was directed toward the late veteran guitarist Jimi Hendrix, of whose version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’, this is what Dylan had to say: “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way,” adding further “Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.” This is perhaps only achievable by the likes of Jimi Hendrix. Musicians, otherwise, are better off without touching works that have been categorised as ‘masterpieces’ and tend not to give in to temptation. In recent times, Mekaal Hasan, a Lahore-based guitar virtuoso had the courage to take up as daunting an album as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Night Song and redress it into his garb; brought to his audience by Lahore Jazz Club, an incredible organisation that has been giving musicians the platform that they rightfully deserve out of sheer love for music.

Night Song, a collaborative studio album by the legendary Pakistani qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (NFAK) and Canadian guitarist and producer Michael Brook, is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Released in 1996, it is nothing short of a phenomenon that had listeners gasping for air, in both shock and awe. Here, you had the ‘Emperor of Qawwali’ divulging sounds that did not classically belong to his genre of music. Upon listening, at first, for qawwali purists, a ‘desacralization’ of the devotional spirit of qawwali and also a deep ‘westernisation’ of the genre itself could be experienced. But as it progresses, a return to form occurs as NFAK’s voice transports you back to the realm of qawwali. At the height of its impact, the album climbed the Billboard charts and also fetched a Grammy nomination. 29 years later, Mekaal Hasan decided to take on a work that was admired by the likes of the recently deceased filmmaker, David Lynch, who himself was notorious for experimenting with surrealistic displays of complex ideas. Confounding as it may very well be, owing largely to the fantastic body of work that Hasan has already produced, the motivation behind it managed to slip through. This was a multidimensional challenge like no other for the guitarist. Of course, he could have chosen to remain idle and not do it at all, or his idleness could have come from covering the entire album note to note. The challenge was therefore to resist both these states of idleness. Then came other challenges. Firstly, as mentioned before, Night Song enjoyed commercial success and critical acclaim, which makes it a bulletproof work of art, so much so that the subject of general subjectivity attached to all art could come into question – a bold claim, I confess. Secondly, NFAK is still a household name, and it should not come as a surprise if Generation Alpha sways to his voice when the time comes. It is also true that people request contemporary qawwals to sing his qawwalis, so a qawwal party emboldened to sing Night Song should not be a problem. Thirdly, the musical arrangement and production are immaculately rendered. From Brook’s guitar work to his use of synthesisers to Khan’s note selection on the harmonium, all are tastefully eclectic but form a cohesion like no other. Brook was also mindful to give certain elements the space that they undoubtedly needed in terms of their frequencies. Some bass lines stand out so distinctly that dialling down their volumes would have altered the song’s natural progression.

With these insurmountable challenges at hand, one could easily imagine that anxiety cannot stay at bay. But the musician that we are speaking of here has delivered Eastern classical and progressive rock fusion albums like Sampooran and Saptak, and through those, had introduced the world to the incredibly skilled Eastern classical vocalist, Javed Bashir and the soulful flautist, Ahsan Pappu. We are speaking of a man who made a technical musical marvel called ‘Andholan’ compete with top charting pop hits of the time. It was hard to find music listeners to not have the song burned to their phones’ memory cards. Andholan was not a conventional song by any yardstick, yet it had a refrain that could endlessly keep spinning in your head and also make your head spin. You could not oscillate the notes that Javed Bashir was effortlessly rendering, but you tried. You could not emulate Mekaal Hasan’s guitar tone or figure out what scales he was playing, but you tried. You could not keep the time of John Louis Pinto’s drums, and remained in doubt if this was an even four-by-four time signature, but you tried. Entering Alhamra Arts Council on the 19^th of April in Lahore to attend the Night Song tribute, with this knowledge certainly helped, but not without posing the perplexing problem of how the masterpiece would be approached. Too much caution could make the attempt sound sheepish and unoriginal. Too little could make it alienating. The ideal standard with works by masters is to follow as is, without any deviations from form and structure. What Mekaal Hasan did was not ideal. His take was a refreshing reminder that a seasoned artist such as him could re-envision the album in a light that stays true to the core material but also has his personal stamp on it. Starting with ‘Ya Gaus Ya Meeran’ from the recently unearthed NFAK album Chain of Light, released by Peter Gabriel’s record label and produced by Michael Brook. This particular qawwali was right up Mekaal Hasan’s alley. It had a texture and arrangement that reminded you of ‘Ya Ali’ from Sampooran. Sweet Pain or Naina De Akhay was presented as a song that had so many progressive rock elements that it could easily be called a new genre: progressive qawwali rock. A very similar approach was taken with the rest of the album as well. The energy of the music flowing through the crowd was so intoxicating that it coagulated everyone together as one body. Practically all of the audience was transfixed in a state of trance that qawwali listeners attribute only to when listening to NFAK’s qawwalis. Rock music enthusiasts were not far off from this state as they rocked their heads back and forth with thick guitar riffs and hard-smashing double bass of the drums. The band proceeded to perform notable tracks such as My Heart, My Life, Lament, My Comfort Remains, Longing, and Crest from Night Song and ended the night with Sanson Ki Mala.

Mekaal Hasan’s victory was visible. He had triumphed by doing what Brendel, Edenroth, and Dylan had endorsed. He served you your favourite dish on a platter of his design. He digressed from the original only to come back to it as soon as the sense of longing for it started peaking. Through the chants of the qawwals, you could hear NFAK’s words, but through Mekaal Hasan’s guitar came a sound altogether different from Michael Brook’s. It was his signature style. It was his machinations that you could hear in the drums, in the bass, and even in Ahsan Pappu’s flute. In one and a half stellar hours, Mekaal Hasan resurrected NFAK, paid homage to other rock and jazz icons, and took a bow in front of Michael Brook. Mekaal Hasan did what NFAK sacrilegiously dared to do with the genre of qawwali and what Michael Brook did to the world of music production: introduce something so unanticipated that it stands the test of time. The ingenuity of Mekaal Hasan’s creations deserves to be recorded, produced, and distributed as Night Song 2.0.