Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at WOMAD 1985: Were you there?

In the year of our 30th anniversary, Real World Records will be paying a special tribute to one of our most popular artists, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Our first encounter with the legend of Qawwali music was when he performed at WOMAD Festival in 1985 on Mersea Island, Essex, which marked the beginning of a long association between Nusrat, WOMAD and Real World. We are making an open call to those of you who were at the festival that summer: we want to hear your memories of the historic concert, and if you have any photos of the event, we’d love to see them. All of your contributions will form part of a special feature we will publish later this year.

The official poster for the 1985 festival.

At the 1985 festival, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party gave their first performance for a primarily non-Asian audience with a recital lasting for more than four hours, finishing in the early dawn. Amongst the other artists on the line-up that year were New Order, The Fall, The Pogues, Penguin Café Orchestra, and Toots and the Maytals.

If you were at the event and have a story to tell, or a photograph to share, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch

Featured release

  • Shahen Shah

    Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

    Released 05 June 1989

    The emotional intensity and soaring power of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice transcends all boundaries of language and religion, and has popularised Sufi music beyond Muslim peoples to audiences worldwide. Amongst Real World Records’ most emblematic artists, Nusrat was known as Shahen-Shah-e-Qawwali: The Brightest Shining Star in Qawwali.

By Online Editor

Main image: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in 1993. Photo credit: Brett Hambling.

Published on Tue, 09 April 19

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