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.