Pathanay Khan – a legend

LAHORE – Eleven years have passed but yet the legend of the great Pathanay Khan still remains, whose lilting sweet yet pain filled Saraiki songs are absorbed by lovers of folk music. Pathanay Khan or Ghulam Mohammad, was born in 1926 in the village Basti Tambu Wali, situated in the heart of the Thal Desert, several miles from Kot Addu, Punjab. When he was only a few years old, his father, Khameesa Khan, brought home a third wife after which his own mother decided to leave her husband. She took Ghulam Muhammad along and went to Kot Addu to stay with her father. When the boy fell seriously ill, his mother took him to the house of a spiritual doctor who advised her to change his name because it seemed ‘too heavy for him’ as the doctor is known to have said. Meanwhile, folk stories say that the doctor’s daughter commented that he looked like a Pathana. In the region of South Punjab, the name Pathana symbolises love and valour, so from that day onwards he was known as Pathanay.
Pathanay was close to his mother but much as she tried to send him to school, his nature kicked in and soon he started to stray away from school and began to start wandering, contemplating and singing. It is quoted by people who knew him then that this was his own father’s characteristic too. By the time he was in his seventh class, he began to sing kafis by Khwaja Ghulam Farid, who was a Bhawalpuri saint.
His first teacher was Baba Mir Khan, who taught him everything he knew. Singing alone did not earn him enough, so the young Pathanay Khan started collecting firewood for his mother, who used to make bread for the villagers. This enabled the family to earn a very modest living. It is said that at an older age, when Pathanay Khan talked about his childhood, remembering those days brought tears in his eyes and he believed that it was his love for God, music, and Khwaja Farid that gave him the strength to bear this burden.
Pathanay adopted singing as a profession in earnest after his mother’s death. With his voice heavy with expressions, his singing had the capacity to attract and entrance his listeners, and he himself could in turn sing for hours. Khan’s reverence for Khawaja Ghulam Farid was absolute. Khawaja Farid was everything for him and he derived all his spiritual strength from him. One rarely sees a singer who can understand and render poetry as good as Pathanay Khan rendered Khawaja’s poetry for the audience. His reading style was so clear and popularly punctuated that even a non-Saraiki speaker could follow the text and meanings of most words. It remains the best-kept secret that Pathanay khan sung much better when he was unaccompanied by tabla, because it was in raw form.
Depending on his mood, Pathanay would sing the same kafi in different ragas. However, unlike other famous singers, he would never brag or mention that he was changing the raga for a particular kafi. It naturally flew from his heart and he remained oblivious to the technicalities. Pathanay Khan learned music from Amir Khan, a local musician who was a descendant of Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan. He was not trained as a classical musician and learned musical techniques during his singing at mela gatherings. His singing absorbed the essence of masses, their aspirations and miseries. Nonetheless, Pathanay had a great desire to sing a classical raga and tried to convince Ustad Chote Ghalam Ali Khan to teach him. Pathanay Khan gave his own deeper meaning to Khawaja Sahib’s poetry in his typical style and sprit of singing.
Pathanay Khan is known to have elevated the form of Kafi to a much higher level than his predecessors. Khan’s famous musical pieces include meda ishq vi tun, ghoom charakhda ghoom, mai vi jana jhok, mera ranjhan hun and kia haal sunawan. Pathanay was given the pride of performance award by the president of Pakistan. He embodied his own unique style in singing. He died in March 2000, after protracted illness. But among those desert flowers of Thal, and everywhere else in Pakistan, the scent of his presence prevails gently, never diffusing from the minds of people.