An Interview with Brooklyn Qawwali Party
By Tom Crenshaw, tom@rockom.net
The New York Times says, "Liking Brooklyn Qawwali Party doesn't depend on if you know what Qawwali is. Nor does it depend on how you feel about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, its most revered practitioner. This is an 11-piece band… that piles texture into Mr. Khan's melodies, ultimately transforming them; it's joyous music, and this band adds all the extra fun and funk it knows." Paying tribute to one of the world’s great vocalists, Brooklyn Qawwali Party formed to honor the legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, reworking his thunderous songs for an eclectic orchestra comprised of groundbreaking jazz musicians. Funky, smart, and loving, BQP captures the joyful spirit of this Pakistani folk music in a unique instrumental blend of jazz and Qawwali that will be sure to get you on your feet and clapping. RockOm recently sat down with Brook Martinez, founder of Brooklyn Qawwali Party to discuss the band’s music, the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and their appearance on CBS Television special Faith, Music and Culture.
RockOm: Tell us how Brooklyn Qawwali Party came about.
Brook Martinez: Brooklyn Qawwali Party came about in 2004. In college I had become a fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late great Pakastani Sufi vocalist, who became internationally famous in the '80s and '90s and then died in 1997. Originally I was studying Indian philosophy and Indian music and then I studied jazz and worked at the World Music Institute, which is a non-profit in New York that used to present him before he died. So I had been a fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for a while and I had also been studying jazz in New York and was an active New York jazz musician. Basically, my community of musicians started to pass around a CD of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan without me knowing until they finally came up to me and said, "Hey, have you heard of this guy? He's an amazing singer!" I said, "Of course I've heard of him. I've been listening to him for forever." I didn't know they were interested in that kind of music; I thought they were more interested in Western jazz music. So once I knew that my jazz community was starting to get into him I thought, well this music actually lends itself well or has parallels to jazz music in that it uses simple melodies as platforms for improvisation and it's got a great swinging rhythm similar to jazz. So I thought, well what if we tried playing these melodies themselves - not singing them and not singing the Sufi poetry as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan did - but actually perform them with our own jazz instruments? So I got five of my horn player friends together, percussionists, someone who could play accordion and eventually change that to the harmonium, and guitar and bass and we tried playing the music and it really worked out. That was back in 2004 and we had our first show that summer.
RockOm: What was the original reaction from your musician buddies? Did they think you had lost your mind that you were trying to unite these two fronts?
Brook: No, the initial reaction was "Yes!" One member found out that I had this idea and he was like, "I have to be in this band." They instantly knew this was something special and they basically sought me out for it. I chose people I had wanted but there was even one musician who heard about it from a friend and was like, "Oh, I gotta do that... that would be amazing." And then at the first rehearsal, the first notes we hit, we all sort of knew and looked at each other and said, "This sounds really good." From the start it was really exciting.
RockOm: Is it just about the music for you guys or do you actually subscribe to the Sufi faith and tradition? Is that something you practice?
Brook: Well, my approach to the band was to go from the music into wherever each person is at spiritually and allow the music to move them in that way. Everyone really has their own different spiritual beliefs. None of us are actually practicing Sufis. But the music from its origins is inherently spiritual and Sufism has an openness by saying that it really is about your own intimate relationship with The Higher or the Divine, regardless of your religion or what you believe in. For me personally, it's about the actual experience in the moment of playing that hopefully will move us into different states of good feeling. Original qawwali is really to get into a sort of spiritual trance or higher vibration through the music. So personally I just open myself up to the music and I've had all different experiences with the music - amazing moments as well as moments where I'm just a band leader managing a band. I think that's reality; every note you play can't be an ecstatic high but if you are open to the music then things can happen. I try to keep the music itself in an open enough format where special moments can happen.
RockOm: Particularly now with what's going on in Iran, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and unrest throughout the middle east, how important is it to learn about eastern music?
Brook: Music is just one part of learning about eastern culture and understanding that for the most part, we're all very much the same. Then there are extremes on both ends that we hear about in the news all the time, with the more intense political and religious movements. But from my experience, I get so much positive feedback from Pakistani-Americans and Pakistani people all over the world who have been very happy about this. I think an awareness is coming about in the West about the East and eastern music. The musical CDs are available, you can watch videos on YouTube, and so the information is there and people know that it's good. From my perspective, the political media tries to create the separation and drama, but it's up to the people, from the roots, to understand beyond that. We're all so similar, with our own ethnic flares, but at the core we're all human beings.
RockOm: We had the opportunity to interview the Wailers not too long ago and I had asked that if you knew nothing about Rasta, if the spirituality was transferable through the music. So let me ask you about Qawwali. If we know nothing about the music or spirituality itself, do you think there's an essence in the music that's transferable, creating a spark with the audience where there was none before?
Brook: When Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan brought this music to the international limelight, no one that didn't speak Urdu could understand the lyrics, but he became an international superstar. The essence of the music was coming through, regardless if you could understand the poetry and if you knew the history of it all. We were all moved by his music, not by the beliefs we knew that he had, but more by the more immediate effect of listening to his music which was enlivening to say the least. I was able to take that as the reason we focused specifically on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, because he was the one who brought this to the international limelight. We felt almost welcome to take his style of the music and play with it. Just understanding him from interviews and from friends of his, he had a very open mind on collaborating with the West. So for us, it's really about that immediate effect which can range from making someone smile, making someone get up and dance (when they may not have that night), making someone feel inner joy by listening to good music or maybe someone having a real experience with it. And that really is up to the listener and where they're at that day or in that moment in their life. You just never know.
RockOm: One thing undeniable about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's music as well as the music that BQP makes is that you can't really be still and listen to it. You have to move; It creates a vibration that makes me want to move. It's a very proactive music.
Brook: Absolutely. I'm a drummer and I'm moved by rhythm, that's my thing. With Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Brooklyn Qawwali Party, it's sort of that the rhythm and how it moves you that is the basis for it all. It was really important to me to choose this music, as opposed to other religious music that I love that can be more solemn, because it's upbeat, joyous, it grooves and has that intensity. We compare it to Western gospel music because it has that real intense energy that's not so focused on the more solemn side of religious chant but on the energized side.
RockOm: Tell us about the CBS television special that the band was featured on. How did that come about?
Brook: The CBS documentary was a 30-minute special called Faith, Music and Culture. They had found out about Brooklyn Qawwali Party through someone in their office that said, "Oh, this would be a good band for that." They sent me an email and said "We're the CBS Religion Unit" - which I never knew existed [laughs] - and said they were doing this thing with a Christian a capella group, Jewish rappers, kirtan and they'd love to do us too. They came and videoed a local show in Brooklyn and it was great.
RockOm: Tell us about your song, "Mustt Mustt."
Brook: This was one of the first songs that we started playing and one of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's most famous songs. It has actually been covered by Massive Attack, who did a collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the early 90's and he's recorded it so many times. In Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's culture it's just a popular number and so it's one we love to play for everyone.
RockOm: What's the future hold for Brooklyn Qawwali Party?
Brook: The future holds a second album, hopefully coming out in the fall. We're also playing at Lincoln Center on August 12th at 7:30 for their free outdoor festival, which it's a great honor to be a part of that festival. We're sharing it with Susheela Raman who is a fantastic singer from India. That's our next big show in New York and we're just looking to do some collaborating with singers as well, which could be really interesting coming up. The future is exciting for us.
Tags: Brooklyn Qawwali Party, CBS, Dance, Divine, Horns, Interview, Jazz, music, New York, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pakistan, Pakistani, Qawwali, RockOm, RockOm.net, spirituality, Sufi, Trance
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