Investigating a musician

This lesson asks you to gather information from reliable sources on a musician outside the Western tradition, analyse and critique it, and analyse the impact of notable performers on a genre. The museum offers the life of Ziryab, with what separates older reports from the later idealized portrait, and the life of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his carrying of qawwali to a wider audience. Canadian and Western musicians come from your class. ¹

In the record of Ziryab, tell who is speaking: a contemporary witness, a later writer or a modern scholar. Then ask what remains after that distinction.

For each musician, name the genre they belong to and the audience they reached, then separate what the record says of their impact from your own opinion.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was born Pervez Fateh Ali Khan at Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, into a Punjabi Muslim family from Jalandhar in which qawwali, which the article calls the Sufi devotional song of Pakistan and India, had passed down for some six centuries ². His father wanted him to be a doctor or an engineer, qawwals then having low standing, but relented when he saw his gift ². He began as the tabla player of his father's party; after his father's death in 1964 he became its lead singer in 1965 alongside his uncle Mubarak Ali Khan, and led it from 1971 ². The record names the party, the family and the years. It does not say what he sang that made his father relent.

A famous musician is easily pictured as a lone genius. The record on Ziryab corrects the picture from two sides. Maqqari describes allowances for him and his children, and sons and daughters practising singing, a craft of instruction, competition and patronage, not isolated genius ³. Reynolds restores Ibn Hayyan's accounts of Ubayd Allah's innovations and family interaction, which Maqqari omitted; the record notes this rests on the scholar's comparison, not an independent reading of that original ⁴. And TDV describes teaching in stages, so the artist should not be reduced to a string count ⁵.

A plan for investigating a musician can be drawn from what these records separate. Ask who is speaking: TDV gives Ziryab's training and travels, Maqqari's narrative is attributed and not a contemporary proceeding the museum inspected, and Reynolds compares Maqqari with Ibn Hayyan ^{5 6 7}. Ask what is not settled: TDV leaves his birthplace and date uncertain, and Reynolds notes differing sources on the journey and chronology ^{5 8}. Ask what stands on one article: Nusrat's honours and his over 125 albums, as of 2001, come from English Wikipedia and a Wikidata item ^{2 9}.

The Ziryab record rests on Maqqari, a TDV biography and Reynolds's study, and Nusrat's rests on one Wikipedia article and a Wikidata item. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: which of the two records should a researcher trust more before checking anything further, and why?

• Ziryab: the voices behind his portrait and what each says.
• Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan: his father's party, the labels and the honours, as one Wikipedia article lists them.
• The fifth string: the attribution tested against the sources that report it.
• Mustt Mustt: the fusion album with Michael Brook, one of those his record names as reaching a wider audience.

Read the records Ziryab and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Choose one report from each record and write how you would check it against another source.