On 29 May 1997, American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley walked into the waters of Wolf River Harbour in Memphis, Tennessee, while waiting for his bandmates to arrive for sessions that would become his tragically unfinished second album. He was 30 years old, the creator of a single studio album, Grace (1994), and one of the most distinct voices in modern music. The accident that killed him froze his career in a permanent state of possibility. It also froze a remarkable artistic relationship that had connected a New York rock musician to a legendary Pakistani maestro, thousands of miles away.That relationship began in 1990 in Harlem, New York, when Buckley first heard the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Pakistani “Shahanshah-e-Qawwali”, who had become the most internationally recognised exponent of the centuries-old form of Sufi music. In liner notes written six years later, Buckley recalled standing smitten in his roommate’s room while Nusrat’s music poured from the speakers. He did not understand Urdu, yet he felt himself pulled into the emotions through sound alone.
Jeff Buckley’s own words about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, alongside a photo of them both after Khan’s World Music Institute concert at Town Hall, New York, October 7, 1995
