"I also like Western classical music and jazz"
About this Quote
For an artist whose name is practically shorthand for qawwali, Nusrat F. A. Khan’s casual “I also like Western classical music and jazz” lands like a quiet refusal to be filed under “world music” and forgotten. The sentence is deliberately plain, almost throwaway, and that’s the point: he isn’t asking permission to cross borders, he’s treating curiosity as normal.
The specific intent reads as both invitation and corrective. Invitation, because it signals to listeners outside South Asia that he’s already in conversation with their traditions; corrective, because it pushes back against the exoticizing expectation that a devotional singer should stay “authentic,” sealed off from global forms. Khan’s “also” does heavy lifting. It positions Western classical and jazz not as replacements for qawwali, but as additional languages in the same musical brain. That single word keeps continuity intact while expanding the map.
The subtext is craft-based, not just taste-based. Jazz implies improvisation, elastic timing, call-and-response, the thrill of stretching a theme until it breaks and somehow returns. Western classical suggests discipline, architecture, control of dynamics, long-form emotional planning. These are exactly the tensions Khan mastered: ecstatic flight built on rigorous structure.
Context matters: speaking as a globally touring performer in an era when gatekeepers loved tidy categories, he’s asserting a cosmopolitan ear. It’s less a confession than a credential, signaling that tradition can be porous without being diluted.
The specific intent reads as both invitation and corrective. Invitation, because it signals to listeners outside South Asia that he’s already in conversation with their traditions; corrective, because it pushes back against the exoticizing expectation that a devotional singer should stay “authentic,” sealed off from global forms. Khan’s “also” does heavy lifting. It positions Western classical and jazz not as replacements for qawwali, but as additional languages in the same musical brain. That single word keeps continuity intact while expanding the map.
The subtext is craft-based, not just taste-based. Jazz implies improvisation, elastic timing, call-and-response, the thrill of stretching a theme until it breaks and somehow returns. Western classical suggests discipline, architecture, control of dynamics, long-form emotional planning. These are exactly the tensions Khan mastered: ecstatic flight built on rigorous structure.
Context matters: speaking as a globally touring performer in an era when gatekeepers loved tidy categories, he’s asserting a cosmopolitan ear. It’s less a confession than a credential, signaling that tradition can be porous without being diluted.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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