POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Spirited Performance of Qawwali : Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his eight-man group deliver an impressive set of intricate compositions to an appreciative audience.

An athletic club isn’t your usual pop music venue, but then the music of Pakistan’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan isn’t your usual pop fare.

Ali Khan is the premier singer in the world of Qawwali music, a style regarded as classical music and one concerned with devotional and spiritual themes related to Sufi mysticism. He delivered an impressive performance Sunday at the Sequoia Athletic Club, rather than at a typical pop theater, to an audience of about 1,000 made up largely of natives of the Indian subcontinent who were familiar with, and knowledgeable about, the intricacies of the music.

Their responses provided valuable insights to clue newcomers in to the music because, apart from the obvious skills of Ali Khan and his eight-man party (band), the performance provided Western listeners with few familiar signposts. Smoke machines and lasers were used occasionally--the latter seeming particularly well suited to some of Ali Khan’s vocals.

But Qawwali music itself features no accessible dance-floor beats to pull a listener in, no easily discernible hooks or song structures to lock into during the marathon performances. Ali Khan’s first set Sunday clocked in around the two-hour mark, and the shortest pieces were in the 10- to 15-minute range.

Ali Khan used hand signals to control the dynamics and inject some variety through tricky stops and starts through the lengthy arrangements. The only rhythmic accompaniment was from a tabla played brilliantly by Dildar Khan, who proved astonishingly adroit at engaging in quicksilver duels with Nusrat’s vocal lines, maintaining a galloping rhythm, and switching between the two without missing a beat.

Eerie unison harmonium (pump organ) melodies played by Ali Khan’s brother Farook Fateh Ali Khan and Rahmat Ali seamlessly wove in and around the vocal lines. Apparently, Qawwali is a style sufficiently formalized that Farook Khan and Rahmat Ali were able to recognize the direction of Nusrat’s vocals from the first few notes of a phrase and follow his lead.

Nusrat is certainly a commanding singer, but he didn’t dominate the performance quite as much as one would anticipate. Vocals were often traded off in a manner suggesting the call-and-response style of American gospel music, but one audience source indicated it was a device for adding variety to the arrangements. The most frequently used second voice Sunday was the high-pitched, boyish tone of Rahat Ali, Nusrat’s nephew; the most impressive, the clear, high tones of Rahmat Ali.

The focal point always remained the melismatic modal spirals Nusrat improvised endlessly around the melodies.

The greatest audience response seemed to have been reserved for quieter moments, when he concentrated on storytelling, building up to punch lines that brought appreciative roars from the crowd.