A few years ago the melody for this song came to me in a dream. I woke up from a nap, and as I took a stroll down a California beach, the song structure began to assemble itself. I was there to see a lover for the last time and say goodbye. But in that dream I had decided to move there instead, close to the ocean, abandoning my plans to attend graduate school in Islamic studies, back on the East Coast. In those days, I was consumed by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s recordings. Melodies often dance across my dreams, and back then, each was steeped in the heat and hue of his music.
Dreams are revered in Islam. Imagined things have a kind of existence all their own, and it’s often said that sleep is a kind of little death.
And it is He who takes your souls by night and knows what you have committed by day. Then He revives you therein that a specified term may be fulfilled. Then to Him will be your return; then He will inform you about what you used to do. (Quran 6:60)
In that drowsy melange of melody and love left unfinished, I imagined Nusrat on the beach, far away from his native Punjab. Nusrat is beloved by audiences around the world and affectionately known in South Asia as the Shahenshah-e-Qawwali, the final seal of qawwals whose music is a Sufi practice aiming for fana’a, the annihilation of self in pursuit of the divine. I’ve found deep inspiration for my own music in how qawwals use chant and repetition to comfort (and challenge) the self, sustain explorations in rhythm, and invite audiences to participate.
Nusrat’s classic Yeh Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai (“Oh, this mild intoxication”) is a 30 minute qawwali I’ve listened to over and over since childhood, while writing, and even when napping before I drift into dreams. The song was originally a ghazal by the poet Anwar Farrukhabadi, whose pen-name was Fana’a.
One of my favorite American musicians, Jeff Buckley, called Nusrat his “Elvis.” Of the many other renditions of the song, Buckley’s is my favorite — a live recording from 1993 in which he briefly introduces Nusrat, leaps past audience laughter as he sings in Urdu, then invites the audience to join in a call and response, explaining that “you have to do it like this — how they do it in Pakistan,” before clapping in rhythm and belting into powerful, wordless melody. There’s a heat and raw intensity in his singing, a vulnerability and emotional cry beyond plain language, that recalls the way qawwals improvise for hours on end. I may not descend from the qawwali tradition, but that kind of desire to create a sonic world of pure feeling through wordless expression, even of pain and most often of longing for a lover, is what inspired the wordless outro of my own song.
What Farrukhabadi gave to Nusrat was given to Buckley and in turn has found its way to me, dreaming of a Pakistani Elvis on the beach, interpolating the melodic shapes of Yeh Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai into the chorus of this song. Every time I wake, even after a nap, I too thank the divine for my return to this world, especially when I can bring something back to mark love lost or a blessing returned.
Humeysha's Nusrat on the Beach EP will be out August 2.
