The Patiala Gharana is one of the most prominent gharanas of vocal classical music. It was initially sponsored by rulers of the Patiala state of Punjab, which was famous for ghazal, thumri and khayal.

 

Bade Fateh Ali Khan (born: 1935) is amongst the foremost Khayal vocalists alive today in Pakistan, and the last significant exponent of the Patiala Gharana (stylistic lineage). He is the younger of the singing duo "Amanat Ali-Fateh Ali".

 

Amanat Ali-Fateh Ali became celebrities while still in their childhood in undivided India, and achieved their highest official recognition in 1969, when the President of Pakistan conferred on them the Pride of Performance Medal.

 

 

  

Fateh Ali and his late brother were trained by their father, Akhtar Hussain, a distinguished vocalist in the patronage of the princely state of Patiala in colonial, undivided India. Their grandfather, Ali Baksh, also served the same court, and was a cofounder of the Patiala gharana. The prodigious talent of Amanat Ali- Fateh Ali received early encouragement at the Patiala court. They had a glorious debut in 1945 at Lahore, sponsored by the influential connoisseur, Pandit Jeevanlal Mattoo Their breakthrough came at the All-Bengal Music Conference in Calcutta in 1949, when Amanat Ali was 17, and Fateh Ali was 14, after which they never looked back. Life changed dramatically for the budding stars when India was partitioned in 1947, and the family opted to migrate to Pakistan.

The two brothers as a duo had neatly dividing their singing by specialisation. Amanat Ali Khan had a gifted voice and he embellished his singing in broad sweeps by lagao, and blossoming out in the upper register while Fateh Ali engaged in intricacies of the countless behlawas and complex taans, in a much lower and gravelly voice, respectively drawing inspiration from two elders of their gharana, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan.

Ustad Fateh Ali was urged to restart his performing career after the sad demise of Ustad Amanat Ali Khan. Fateh Ali Khan eventually overcame this emtional block, and started singing as a duo with his younger brother Hamid Ali Khan, as well his nephews, Asad Amanat Ali Khan or Amjad Amanat Ali Khan who are both sons of his late brother Amanat Ali Khan.Though trained also in the mediaeval Dhrupad genre, Ustad Fateh Ali restricts his repertoire to the modern mainstream genre, Khayal, and the romanticist genres, Thumris, Dadra, and Ghazal. He has performed widely in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and South Asia, and released several recordings. One highly unusual CD released in 1995 is entitled "Ragas and Sagas", which is a collaboration with Norwegian Saxaphonist Jan Garbarek. Fateh Ali has performed all over the world and has many students internationally. The baton of the Patiala gharana is being carried on by sons of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, Sultan Fateh Ali Khan and Rustum Fateh Ali Khan.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the Patiala style of Khayal vocalism has been represented by two streams of the gharana. One stream, gave the music world the Amanat Ali and Fateh Ali duo. The other stream, through its training of Kasur gharana vocalists, produced Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (1903-1968), his brother Barkat Ali Khan (1907-1963), and the former’s son, Munawar Ali Khan (1933-1989).  

 

Other prominent exponents of the gharana are Zahida Parveen, Shahida Parveen, Muhammad Hussain, Ilyas Hussain Khan.