Ustad Saami – God is Not a Terrorist

“To sing is to listen” – Ustad Saami

Volume five of Glitterbeat’s Hidden Music series showcases an iconic and revered 75 year old classical singer. It’s impossible to not look at this cover, this visage of Pakistan’s Ustad Saami, and not suspect that this man is tuned into something deep and beyond the understanding of many. Ustad Saami is the only person left on earth who sings in the Surti style, a style passed down from the 13th century and this may be the last recording of it’s kind.

“75-year-old Ustad Saami risks his life daily in Pakistan to keep alive his microtonal, pre-Islamic, multilingual (Farsi, Sanskrit, Hindi, the ancient language of Vedic, gibberish, Arabic, and Urdu) music. Handed down by his ancestors for over a thousand years, he is the only practitioner of Surti left in the world; when he passes, this music will die with him.” – Ian Brennan