“My father gave me formal education in raagdari. He died in Lahore in 1964 when I was 13. I was in the tenth year of school, and my father’s brother took me into the qawwali ensemble and started giving me formal education in qawwali.”

I like to experiment with my voice, besides music.

I was just studying with my father, a very difficult task for me since he was a great, great Qawwali singer.

From childhood, I had been instructed in the tablaa by my father, along with the astaais and antaraas specific to our Gharana.

People listened to Farsi texts, and to the great texts of our Baba Bulleh Shah, Khwaja Ghulam Farid, Mian Mohammad Bakhsh Jehlmi. People do listen to it these days, but much less than in those days.

As the times change, people change, and so do their tastes, so I try to understand what the public wants, what they require. I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

I also like Western classical music and jazz.

You’ve got to sing from the depths of the heart. Without heart, you cannot be a Qawwal.

It is not necessary that the scion of a singing family, even if he sings, can excel in it. In order to reach his peak he has to work very, very hard.

When people start dancing, they dance like they don’t know they are doing it.

Yes, I tried to change the classical style in a way that people who don’t understand it can enjoy.

I do listen to other music though, and try to pick up what is good.

A man learns all his life and dies the day he thinks that he has learnt everything.

I am not a Sufi, but I follow the Sufi.

There are two languages that I love: Farsi and Panjabi. Because the depth of Sufi thought in these two languages cannot be found in any other language.

A performer learns with experience and with age. I did not know the future when I left home and started out to begin my career: I started qawaali; then I met Peter Gabriel and was exposed to a lot of new ideas.

There should be change – the West should understand our music and culture, and vice versa. With such collaboration, artists can come closer to each other and come to know each other.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

Divorce was emotionally traumatic for me. It was the death of a dream. I was in fairytale land, and the reality of it wasn’t so. But I don’t really like talking about it anymore, because it feels like a thousand lifetimes ago, and also it makes me look desperate like I need it for attention.

People who are too fastidious towards the finite never reach actuality, but linger in abstraction, and their light dies away.

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.