Today’s
Enlightening Entertainment
will be presented
in Urdu and English,
with subtitles in Arabic,
Aulacese (Vietnamese),
Chinese, English,
French, German,
Indonesian, Japanese,
Korean, Malay,
Persian, Portuguese,
Russian, Spanish
and Thai.
If a song has
light and color, then
the music of Pakistan
is a beautiful jewel
shining in the midst
of the world’s
musical treasure chest.
As an expression of culture,
the music of Pakistan
has embraced the diverse
styles and traditions,
originated from
South Asia, Central Asia,
the Arab world
and the modern West.
In today’s
Enlightening Entertainment,
we have a rare chance
to enjoy the living history
of Pakistani Sufi music
with Ms. Riffat Sultana,
renowned
Pakistani singer
and her widely loved
acoustic band
called The Party.
With her memorable voice,
Riffat Sultana sings aloud
the musical wisdom
that has nourished
eleven generations of
famed family musicians
in Pakistan and India.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
The playful Sham
is teasing me.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
The playful Sham
is teasing me.
My shawl
keeps getting tangled,
I feel helpless,
what do I do, Ram.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank.
Both Riffat’s father
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan
and her uncle
Nazakat Ali Khan
were respected Pakistani
master musicians.
Having started their musical
training in India at age 7
and 9 respectively,
they later established their
own school of music,
Sham Churasi Gharana,
after moving
to Pakistan’s town
of Multan around
the mid-20th century.
So they started
Multani Kafi over there,
and they became
very famous for
this Multani Saraiki
language singing.
Mostly my father sang
Khayal style.
Before, our ancestors, my
great-great grandfather,
they started with
the musical Dhrupad.
Dhrupad is like
a very slow mellow style
music, they do like
They take so long
[for] one note,
and stay over there, and
every note is so beautiful,
like a pearl,
Dhrupad is kind of like that.
Then, Ms. Sultana’s father
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan
introduced a new style
into the music,
called Khayal.
Khayal is more like…
something like that,
making like a different
kind of a voice, phrase.
So kind of
like a modern style.
So my father started Khayal.
They became
like a very, like a legend
in Pakistan and India,
they performed
all over the world
with my uncle, my father.
Khayal and Tu meri
are two modern genres
of classical singing
in India and Pakistan.
A creator of Khayal
as well as a songwriter
in Tu meri,
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan
brought greater freedom
and imagination
to classical music.
Aspiring singers
from India and abroad
came to stay at the house
to study music with him.
Following
the family tradition,
the vocal teacher
trained his four sons to be
experts in classical music
enriched with a wide scope
of improvisation.
We are four brothers,
four sisters.
So all brothers do sing,
and all my uncles,
my mum’s side,
my father’s side,
everybody is a singer.
We don’t have any
other work or any job,
it is full time,
everybody has this.
So this is our business,
and they want to do this
because
they are born for that.
Riffat Sultana is
nevertheless
the first woman
in her family history
to sing for the public.
In fact, she did not receive
classical music training
before she became a singer.
She learned to sing by
pure will and by listening
to his father and brothers
during their courses.
Her family and the students
who stayed at their home
all recognized
her gifted voice.
I say I want to sing,
I want to sing some day.
So even I am cooking,
I am singing.
I am cleaning, I am singing,
I am making chapatti,
I’m singing, just
singing, singing, singing.
Sleeping time, singing.
Even I am in the shower
I am singing so loud,
every whole neighbor
listening to me. .
If sometime
it’s like some guys standing
outside of my home.
They are falling in love
with me
because I am singing.
This singing is my spirit.
If I am not on the hill,
he comes into my house.
I tell him off
to leave me alone,
and do not open the door.
While I try to sleep,
he wakes me
with the throw of a stone.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank.
The playful Sham
is teasing me.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
The playful Sham
is teasing me.
My shawl
keeps getting tangled,
I feel helpless,
what do I do, Ram.
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank,
It is first dawn
at the riverbank.
This beautiful song
we just enjoyed
is a prayer song
for Rama and Krishna
in the classical genre
of Bhajan.
We will be back with
more of Riffat Sultana’s
enchanting singing
when we return.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.
Thanks for joining us
again on
Enlightening Entertainment,
getting to know
the acclaimed Pakistani
musician and singer,
Riffat Sultana.
Specializing
in devotional Sufi songs,
Riffat Sultana’s singing
also voices her mother’s
musical legacy.
A gifted vocalist from India,
Riffat’s mother Razia
descended from
a line of top Punjabi
classical musicians
who belonged to
the prominent group
of Hindustani artists
called the Patiala Gharana.
Never performing
in public, Riffat’s mom
sang in private homes
at Sufi ceremonies instead.
My mum had
a very beautiful voice,
and my father
fell in love with her
when he heard her music,
She is a very good singer.
She is singing
in a home party,
some kind of wedding, and
they’re sitting over there,
and she’s sitting
with the women.
And she plays dholak
and she sings so good
some kind of song.
My father is just like, wow!
And my mum [is]
very beautiful, too.
She is a very
special person too.
She will pray
five time namaz.
And she worshipped
her guru, she loved
her Sufi saint, his name is
Shahbaz Qalandar.
He’s very big Sufi saint
in Pakistan.
My whole family has
big devotion for him.
A natural singer
like her mother,
Riffat Sultana also finds
natural oneness between
singing and prayer,
musical sound
and the Divine.
Music is kind of
like a prayer. It’s prayer.
When we have a note,
one note,
and touches your heart,
it’s kind of like
God is right there,
like we said,
“Music is God, Allah.”
Saregamabadanisa.
Sanetagamabanisa.
When we say
Sa… ah… ave Allah…
sometimes we say
Allah… Allah is God.
So it’s like a spiritual thin.
It’s like we’re praying.
We memorize our God.
We’re just telling him,
putting a hymn
in our heart.
And music is all like God,
and has a feeling inside.
Music has a feeling.
Even classical music,
even Sufi music,
is kind of like
they do prayer,
is feeling inside,
is the God inside.
In each of
her performances,
Riffat Sultana will start
with a Sufi devotional song,
and end with another.
She knows
from deep in her heart
that the vibration
of the musical sound,
or the note, is itself Allah.
So then I sing
in front of you,
in front of Americans,
different kind of
culture people.
They are not listening
[to the] word.
The sur. Sur means note.
Sur is Allah. Sur is God.
The note is Allah.
Sur makes
everybody together,
and feel feeling.
So that’s why
people [are] into my music,
Pakistani, Indian,
Pakistani classical music,
or Sufi music,
people [are] in trance,
they go right inside.
Sur goes in their inside.
God goes inside –
touches [them].
Let us now enjoy a beautiful
Sufi devotional song
composed by
Riffat Sultana’s brother,
Shafqt Ali Khan.
Like many Sufi songs,
this song is a dance song,
describing the excitement
and ecstasy of meeting God.
Unconcerned of the world,
I danced today
with such passion that,
my ankle-bell broke.
Unconcerned of the world,
I danced today
with such passion that,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart.
I was bursting with youth,
and it was craze of love too;
I was bursting with youth,
and it was craze of love too;
Each wink of mine
became an arrow,
Each lock of my hair
became shackles.
When I took hold
of my lover’s hand,
When I took hold
of my lover’s hand,
my hand shook so hard that
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
I will dance all night
even if
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart,
my ankle-bell fell apart.
Spirited viewers,
it was a pleasure
having you with us today.
Please tune in for
the second and final part
of our feature,
“Sur” Is Allah:
Riffat Sultana’s Pakistani
Sufi Devotional Music,”
next Friday on
Enlightening Entertainment.
Up next
on Supreme Master
Television
is Words of Wisdom,
after Noteworthy News.
May your heart
be forever filled with
the sound of music
and love of Allah.
For more on Riffat Sultana
and her music CDs,
please visit
Today’s Enlightening
Entertainment
will be presented in
Urdu and English,
with subtitles in Arabic,
Aulacese (Vietnamese),
Chinese, English,
French, German,
Indonesian, Japanese,
Korean, Malay,
Persian, Portuguese,
Russian, Spanish
and Thai.
Ms. Riffat Sultana is
the first woman
from her musical family
to publicly perform
in the western world.
As the daughter of
the revered Pakistani
classical singer
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan,
Riffat Sultana learned
from her father and
brothers, who are
also greatly
accomplished musicians
of their own right.
They come from
a lineage of musicians
500 years old, and are
the direct descendants of
the famed court musicians
Suraj Khan and Chand
Khan who sang daily
for the Mughal Emperor
Akbar the Great.
Today, acclaimed
Pakistani singer
Riffat Sultana often
performs a wide variety
of music in her trio
known to many as
Riffat Sultana and Party.
My beloved has come
home, O cherished one
My beloved My beloved,
cherished one,
My beautiful beloved has
come home, cherished,
My beloved has
come home.
O my beloved has
come home,
has united me with
the Lord. (Allah)
And this by itself is
making me so happy.
And this by itself is
making me so happy.
My beloved has come
home, O cherished one
My beloved has come
home, O cherished one
My beloved has come
home, O cherished one
My beloved has come
home, O cherished one
In Pakistan,
Sufi devotional songs are
generally called qawwali.
Expressing a spiritual
practitioner’s ecstasy,
qawwali represents
a vibrant musical stream
that has been a part of
Sufi shrines for the past
several hundred years.
Today, on the anniversaries
of the Sufi saints,
their shrines are still
filled with prayers,
qawwali songs
and Sufi dances.
Riffat Sultana describes
how she would join others
in honoring Hazrat
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar,
a beloved saint who
lived in Pakistan.
Every night, all the time,
people sitting
in the shrine,
they pray and they sing
the Sufi music.
You can go
and do your duty,
or what we call hazari.
We have to give that duty
to Shahbaz Qalandar.
So we sing over there.
I start singing and
I feel like I have a big,
big sound system is
over there, because they
have a big dhol (drum)
over, on the top.
And everybody do
Sufi dance.
One hour, women and men.
Some people do like
“boom, boom, boom”
with their feet, very fast,
some with the hands.
It’s beautiful.
I did that
when I stayed over there
4 days, 4 nights.
So I did every night,
one hour, feeling so good.
You feel like
you did some prayer, did
some spiritual thing, and
every saint is over there
to see you, feels like that.
Performing with Riffat
Sultana is tabla player
Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi,
a talented disciple of the
foremost tabla maestro
Ustad Tari Khan, and
guitarist Richard Michos.
Richard Michos is
Riffat Sultana’s husband
who had studied with
her father,
Ustad Salamat Ali Khan.
He continues to honor
the teachings of
his father-in-law as the
manager and member of
Riffat Sultana and Party.
Mr. Michos, who is also
called Shiraz Ali Khan,
shares his feelings
about Sufi music.
Their music is so deep,
that as soon as you hear
them singing, at least
I do, I’m like, wow.
I kind of was drawn
in spiritually to the music,
just the vibration.
Even if I tune
this instrument, and
I start to play this,
you guys are going to
start to feel, Oh, like
this is kind of something
heavenly.
Every so often
it beats the gong
The music that is playing
is calling my beloved.
Whoever can understand
what’s in my heart…
Whoever can understand
what’s in my heart…
I like to sing Sufi music;
it makes me very happy,
Sufi song.
Some compositions made
by my brothers or
my cousins, my uncles.
So then I sing that
composition about my guru,
Shahbaz Qalandar,
Hazrat Ali.
He has come to Sindh
He has come to Sindh
Our sorrows are going
to end
Our sorrows are going
to end
Praises to the Qalandar
(Sufi monk)
He is the truthful
Praises to the Qalandar
(Sufi monk)
Hail to the Qalandar
(Sufi monk)
He has come to Sindh
He has come to Sindh
Our sorrows are going
to end
Our sorrows are going
to end
Besides qawwali, another
major musical genre
in Pakistan is called
the ghazal, a very popular,
stirring, and poetic
classical tradition.
We will be right back
with ghazals and more by
Riffat Sultana and Party.
Please stay tuned to
Supreme Master
Television.
Welcome back to
Enlightening
Entertainment
as we continue to enjoy
the expressive voice of
Riffat Sultana,
a highly praised singer
from Pakistan,
and the music of
her greatly skillful band.
O Eyes O Eyes
How will you pass
the whole night
I cannot find peace
Without my beloved
O Eyes
Rich in its emotional
appeal, the ghazal is a
poetic form with rhyming
couplets and refrains.
The ghazal usually conveys
the beauty of love
and the pain of separation
at the same time.
I was defeated
by my own self
I was defeated
by my own self
I spent the whole night
awake
When I saw my hands
with myrtle on them,
I spent all night crying
O Eyes
How will you pass
the whole night
I cannot find peace
Without my beloved
O Eyes
Written primarily in Urdu,
the ghazal has influenced
the poetry of many
other languages.
Ghazal singers usually
have classical music
training and sing
in one of the two modern
classical genres,
Khyal or Thumri.
It’s a few words
Thumri has, but they [do]
improvisation from that
word again and again,
over and over.
This is a beautiful thing.
My father made once
Thumri, Thumri Bahari.
Everything’s blue
without my beloved.
Everything’s blue
without my beloved.
Another interesting
feature of Pakistani music
is its scoreless nature.
The melodies are
passed on and developed
without any written
documentation.
Moreover,
unlike the music scale
that is central to
other forms, the most
important structure
in Pakistani music is
the raga, which is defined
as a melodic mode.
The difference between
a raga and a scale is,
in the scale you generally
just go straight up
and straight back down,
right?
Do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti,
do, do, do, do, do.
But in their music
it’s the notes.
So it will be like one raga,
da bani.
For example, it has
the notes of a minor scale
but you have to sing them
in a certain way.
So you have go:
You see how I
came down crooked.
Because ragas,
you have these rules.
So you can’t go straight
up and down.
And they might have
5 ragas that use
the same notes, but
the order is different,
and they feel different.
A raga can express
the specific mood
associated with
different times of the day,
or different seasons
of the year.
This adds a variety of
musical expressions
to Pakistani music.
Yes, this is a beautiful
thing if you like it.
This is special
in the world.
I feel that when we have
a morning raga,
you feel morning.
When I listen to
my father’s morning raga,
even they sing night time,
I feel right away, morning,
this is should be
the morning time .
Evening raga,
you feel evening.
Afternoon raga,
you feel that, too.
I don’t know [if]
other people feel that,
but I feel right away.
O my Lover, O my Lover,
O my Lover, O my Lover,
Without you,
my mind does
not engage in any activity
Without you, my mind does
not engage in any activity
O my Lover, O my Lover,
O my Lover, O my Lover,
Without you, my mind does
not engage in any activity
Without you, my mind does
not engage in any activity
What magic has been
done by your eyes
What magic has been
done by your eyes
Without you, my mind does
not engage in any activity
Without you, my mind does
not engage in any activity
O my Lover, O my Lover,
O my Lover, O my Lover
To conclude our program,
let us enjoy
Riffat Sultana’s
“Allah Hoo,” a vibrant
qawwali song in which
praise is offered to Allah
from the deep within
the singer’s heart.
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
The time when there was
neither land
nor the world
nor moon, sun or the sky,
nor moon, sun or the sky,
when the truth was not
known to anyone
when the truth was not
known to anyone
At that time
nothing existed
But only you everywhere
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
Only praise and
remember Allah
Only praise and
remember Allah
Do not do injustice
to anyone
Only praise and
remember Allah
Do not do injustice
to anyone
Only remember and
praise the One Who is
the Creator of this world
Only praise and
remember Allah
Do not do injustice
to anyone
Only praise and
remember Allah
Do not do injustice
to anyone
Only remember and
praise the One who is
the Creator of this world
Only praise and
remember Allah
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
O! The only God
(Allah Hoo)
To Ms. Riffat Sultana
and Party artists
Mr. Shiraz Ali Khan and
Mr. Ferhan Najeeb Qureshi,
our warm appreciation
and applause for sharing
with us the beautiful
past and present music
of Pakistan.
May more and more
audiences come to
experience Pakistan’s
spiritual culture through
your engaging and
elevating performances.
For more
on Riffat Sultana
and her music CDs,
please visit
Spirited viewers,
it has been a pleasure
having you with us
on Enlightening
Entertainment.
Up next is
Words of Wisdom,
after Noteworthy News.
May your heart
be replenished with the
currents of Divine love.