442: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan brought Sufi music to the American South
A look back at how the Pakistani maestro’s qawwali helped shaped Americana folk in the 1995 film, "Dead Man Walking"
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Illustration by Vivian Lai
Words by Janvi Sai
The 442: A JoySauce column named after the military unit, designed to school you (in all the best ways) on accomplished Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders of the past. Asians have been shaping American history, culture, food, politics, identity, and more for centuries—it’s time we acknowledge what’s been left out of most textbooks.
Have a historical tidbit you’d like to share? Let us know!
When visiting music-heavy media, I usually fall into one of two camps: either waiting for the musical sections to pass so we can get to the non-musical parts, or the other way around. The exception is when the music and story strike a rhythm, not simply serving as vessels for one another, but working together to amplify each other's impact.
In the 1995 drama Dead Man Walking, the grieving of an incarcerated Sean Penn’s on death row and Susan Sarandon as a Catholic nun builds to an emotionally charged climax in a prison execution chamber. The gravity of the scene is matched by a musical score.
The film follows the final days leading up to the execution of a death row inmate in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, his spiritual advisor’s appeals and grappling with justice, and the lives shattered by his gruesome crimes against two young lovers. They are all present at the execution theater for the final death, dramatized by the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-97).
The scene and the singing complement each other—though it’s an otherwise unlikely pairing, and cuts through as wholly unexpected, to say the least.
Dead Man Walking is based on the memoir of the same name by Roman Catholic nun Sister Helen Prejean. The story takes place in a civil parish in Louisiana, with the film underscoring an atmosphere of strong community favor toward capital punishment.
Khan, on the other hand, was a Pakistani musician celebrated as the most renowned singer of qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music originating in South Asia. Sufism, Islamic mysticism, holds a rich history of meditative artistic expression, including the beloved Persian poetry of Rumi and Hafez, and the hypnotic spins of whirling dervishes. Widespread across the Islamic world, Sufi mysticism found an enduring influence in Persianate South Asia.
Sufi art, music, and poetry transcended religion, culture, and language, and were embraced throughout the Indian subcontinent—from merging with folk music traditions in Bengal, Punjab, and Rajasthan, to shaping Bollywood dance numbers. South Asian Sufi music gained momentum outside the Indian subcontinent through its original qawwali form, and more specifically through Khan, its most notable qawwal, or qawwali artist.
Khan’s international career spanned tours from London to Japan and, much like the prolific connection between Ravi Shankar and George Harrison, included gaining a devoted disciple and collaborator in the late “Hallelujah” singer Jeff Buckley (1966-97). In his liner notes for Khan’s album The Supreme Collection, Vol. 1, Buckley recalled his first time hearing Khan and qawwali as a spiritual jolt, one he met with deep reverence.
Buckley’s nearly lifelong fascination with Khan’s qawwali, despite not knowing the language and their differing cultural backgrounds, illuminates how, amid a soundtrack of American folk rock giants like Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash, Khan’s voice is reserved for the climactic conclusion of Dead Man Walking.
And not just any vocals, but a striking departure from the somber roots ballads that precede it. And for good reason. In the execution scene, we sit with Khan’s drawn out South Asian musical notes, or sargam.
Carrying a lively pulse from classical singing to contemporary South Asian dance music, these vocal flurries offer just a glimpse of an emotional range that weaves euphoric bursts with lingering stretches of anguish, culminating in Khan’s quietly cacophonous lone wails that deepen the most despairing and poignant moment of the score and the film.
But there was no fixed meaning to what he sang. This wordless, ineffable expression of simultaneous ache and spirit reached a transcendent space beyond rhyme or reason, understood deeply beyond language itself. Buckley reflected: “His every enunciation went straight into me. I knew not one word of Urdu, and somehow it still hooked me into the story that he weaved with his wordless voice.” What’s heard in the scene is elegiac and akin to operatic vocalizing, while uniquely spiritual.
Right afterwards, Khan’s voice returns for “The Face of Love,” a duet with Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, and a meditative outro that plays over the end credits. Khan’s music’s pivotal place in the film underscores why it is apt for a story set in Louisiana, which is otherwise devoid of South Asian, Muslim, or mystical references. By concluding the tragedy and carrying it into the closing credits, Khan’s role proves essential not only to the film’s most heightened moment, but also to the soul-stirring sensorial experience the audience leaves with.
Published on October 27, 2025
Words by Janvi Sai
Janvi Sai is a Brooklyn-born, New York-based writer covering culture and style through a sociological lens.