The Quiet

The Quiet is a qawwali-inflected vocal composition performed by Pakistani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The track appears as the sixteenth entry on the album Bandit Queen, Vol. 51, released on January 1, 1995 under the label Oriental Star Agencies Ltd. in digital media format.

The recording spans 1 minute and 44 seconds, featuring Khan’s signature improvisational style and devotional vocal techniques. The album forms part of a larger series associated with the soundtrack of the 1994 Hindi-language film Bandit Queen, directed by Shekhar Kapur, though the exact relationship between this volume and the film’s official score remains undocumented in available sources. Oriental Star Agencies Ltd., a British record label specializing in South Asian music, distributed the release.

Khan’s performance in The Quiet emphasizes sparse instrumentation, centering on his unaccompanied or minimally supported vocals. The track’s brevity contrasts with his longer traditional qawwali works, suggesting an experimental or interstitial role within the album’s sequence. No lyricist, composer, or additional musicians receive attribution in the provided context. The album’s production details, including recording location and engineering personnel, are not publicly verified.

Bandit Queen, Vol. 51 represents one of Khan’s later commercial releases before his death in 1997. The album’s reception and chart performance remain unrecorded in accessible archives, while the track itself has not been widely analyzed in scholarly or critical literature. The label’s catalog frequently repackaged Khan’s recordings across multiple volumes, and this release follows that pattern.