Pathaney Khan, who died on 9 March 2000, was one of the most popular singers of Pakistan, a flagbearer of a tradition going back a thousand years. During his lifetime, he was the best exponent of the poetry of the Sufia saints, especially Khawaja Fareed, who lived and died in the 19th century on the edge of a sprawling desert in western Punjab, not far from the birthplace of Pathaney Khan himself. But Fareed's was not the only verses Pathaney Khan sang; his repertoire prominently featured other Punjabi Sufi poets.
Pathaney Khan belonged to the tradition of the roving minstrels who performed over the centuries at religious and secular festivals all over the northern half of the Subcontinent. Accompanied initially by the iktara and later by other instruments, the audience was wafted into a world of music and poetry. The dominant poetical form in Punjabi and Sindhi has been the Kafi. It has been sung from a very early time, though in the absence of any documentary evidence, it is difficult to say how Kafi developed its musical form. In the poetical text of Shah Hussain, a 16th century poet, raags mentioned in the footnotes for each Kafi more than suggest that Kafis were meant to be sung. The written text of Hussain's Kafis was discovered and reclaimed from Sindh, while the same Kafis had been transmitted orally from generation to generation in the Punjab by the large community of singers.
Pathaney Khan was tutored by Amir AH, the maternal uncle of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan of the Patiala Gharana. He sang the Kafi in the classical ang, which distinguished him from those who sang with the emphasis on its compositional aspect. For Khan, the lyrics of Kafi needed more than mere interpretation, the words were a reference point for musical exploration. The musical idea and the poetic idea were thus made to merge at a higher elevation during the course of the singing. Pathaney Khan sang with full-throated ease, stressing improvisation as all good classical vocalists do. The lyrics were neither limiting nor were they totally incidental, and by playing upon the strength of both, he kept the autonomy of the musical form intact. Pathaney Khan's particular approach had a bigger audience because it attracted both the aficionado and the lay listener.
Out of the haveli
Poetry of the Punjab and Sindh since the very beginning was greatly influenced by the Bhakti movement and its loosely defined humanism that built its worldview on the unity of existence. Bhakti emphasised the commonality of human concerns and advocated tolerance and love as the final answer to the problems afflicting humankind. Though it reached its climax in the 15th and 16th centuries in response to the growing divisions in society based on class, caste and religion, the movement seeped more permanently into the sensibility and style of Punjabi and Sindhi poetry. The two greatest exponents of the Bhakti movement were Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, and the poet Bhagat Kabir, a weaver by profession. Their verses appealed to a wide section of society, presenting a counterpoint to the poetry being written and sung in the courts and havelis of the northern part of the Subcontinent.