Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

The next generation of Mubarak Ali Khan and Fateh Ali Khan was crowned by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, born in Faisalabad, who had unprecedented national and international fame. After the death of his father Fateh Ali Khan in 1964, he started out with his uncle Mubarak Ali Khan and was later joined by Mujahid Mubarak Ali Khan (1922-1994), born in Jalandhar, after the death of Mubarak Ali Khan in 1971.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan became a representative of national identity of Pakistan. He worked with famous music directors in the West who featured his voice in Hollywood mega productions. Peter Gabriel tapped his vocal gravitas for the soundtrack of The Last Temptation of Christ. Nusrat Fateh Ali also collaborated with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack for Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking. His voice filled the background of the prison-riot scene of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.

Keeping himself within the stylistic ambit of his father — singing powerfully and meaningfully in the upper octave and improvising with paltas and tanas — he developed a new style of his own. He is said to be the pioneer of fusing qawwali with Western instrumentation and gave the genre exemplary heights of popularity in the sub-continent, supported by his contribution in Bollywood Cinema.