God is Not a Terrorist

Produced by Ian Brennan, the US music enthusiast whose wanderings have brought us the Malawi Mouse Boys and other treasures, this album – Vol 5 of Glitterbeat's Hidden Musics series – features hypnotic, unvarnished recordings by one of Pakistan's most revered and iconic classical singers. The 75-year-old Ustad Saami sings a microtonal, pre-Islamic music in multiple languages (Farsi, Sanskrit, Hindi, ancient Vedic, Urdu, Arabic and gibberish).

This is a stunning album like few I've heard before. On a surface level there is a similarity to the qawwali music made famous by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan but Saami's sound is more intense, raw and dissonant. It is haunting and beautiful. Saami develops vocal drones out of which he builds a shimmering wave of sound that rises and rises – and he expresses his lead vocal with yearning surrender – each piece being similar yet different (and in no way conventional ‘songs’). Tracks last for several minutes and have names like ‘My Beloved is on the Way’, ‘Hymn’ and ‘War Song’. Seemingly the roots of Saami's music go back to the 13th century and Brennan's sleeve notes suggest that he is the only practitioner of Surti left in the world; when he dies, this music will die with him.

It all makes for a beautiful album to listen to, very powerful and eerie but never harsh in the way polyphonic singing can be. The only fault I have with God is Not a Terrorist is the lack of information – who is playing and singing with Saami? Is this a recording of a typical Surti performance or, like Nusrat Fateh, has the recording been overdubbed and remixed in a Western studio so to make it more palatable for Western ears? But these are minor criticisms, for this is a majestic album.