It was balmy and mercifully dry when promoter Muhammad Ayyub introduced them as “the most famous qawwal in the Indian subcontinent” before Farrukh’s harmonium gently piped in, playing the opening alap for Allah Ho. For the large majority, Khan would have been an obscure name – perhaps one mistakenly associated with the vastly different practice of the sitar raga popularised two decades earlier by Ravi Shankar.Īt midnight, after all the other performances had finished for the day, attendees witnessed Khan taking to the cramped, carpeted stage with his Party: nine members of his extended family of qawwali players, including his brother Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan on the harmonium. On the weekend of 19 July 1985, revellers travelled to the tiny Mersea Island in Essex for headliners New Order, the Fall and Toots and the Maytals. Poor access to the festival site and low attendance almost sunk Womad in its first year, but a well-timed reunion concert for Gabriel’s old band Genesis kept them afloat. The first edition, held in the Somerset town of Shepton Mallet, saw performances by Gabriel, Indian sitar player Imrat Khan and free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Peter Gabriel had begun the festival only three years earlier as a western showcase of music from around the world, as well as that of his peers.
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