“NFAK” is short for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani who teamed with Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack to “Dead Man Walkng” in a most memorable tune of great emotional impact to me.  Maybe it is my advanced age, lol, but I am puzzled why I find all these fabulous musicians who are now passed. There are times when I feel plain dumb. This guy is quite the revelation to me. His vocal abilities are so absolutely unique, I have yet to see anything or anyone who startled me quite as much with their incredible vocal range, their play with sound itself  and their obvious joy of performance. You can say there are people whose voices are instruments – Bob Dylan does that nowadays – but this guy takes the cake.

I’m posting 2 musical vids – take your time – of his collaborations with some of the more exotic rock and roll artists. Peter Gabriel has been a favorite of mine for long years. His innovations have set high standards for the progress of rock music to a level which borders on Jazz, yet still maintains a gritty and muscular feel to it. Make no mistake, both these videos are of rock and roll music. They – in other words – rock.

Which makes NFAK’s involvement that much more interesting………..we’ll go with the more approachable one first, a very cool live performance also featuring Louisville’s own favorite daughter Joan Osborne, Tony Rich, Gloria Estefan and Natalie Merchant, then take off into the more bizarre,  second, also a live performance.

I hope you like these tunes. It’s times like these when I love having a good old irresponsible blog. I can show off my musical tastes as if I was doing the work!!!  Yeah, shameless, I realize. But – hey – I do happen to know what I like. I hope you do as well.

“In Your Eyes“:

“Signal To Noise”: