Aziz Naza
The voice behind Chadhta Sooraj. This page gathers what survives — photographs, posters, sleeves and recordings — kept by the family and shown here in full.
He had to fight his own family to sing qawwali at all. It was not the life they wanted for him and he went to it regardless, which is why the papers, when he died, called him a rebel qawwal.
The other thing they reported is stranger, and more human. The man who became one of the most powerful voices the form has produced grew up idolising Lata Mangeshkar — as a boy, he sang like her.
What he left is “Chadhta Sooraj Dheere Dheere”, a qawwali that travelled further than almost anything of its generation, and “Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Sharabi”, cut for Columbia in 1975. In 2017 his son recorded “Chadhta Sooraj” again, for a film. That line, unbroken, is what this name carries.
The Archive
Photographs, posters and cassette sleeves. Scanned from the family's own collection.
On the stage performance with his group 1975 After recording session at the Studio for movie ‘Fakira’ 1976 with (Left) Mahendra Kapoor & (Right) Kishore Kumar A recording session with ‘Mohd Rafi’ for movie ‘Jai Vijay’ 1977 Jamming session with tabla maestro ‘Zakir Hussain’ 1985 At an award evening with (Left) Shashi Kapoor, Manoj Kumar & Amitabh Bachchan 1978 After a performance at Lata Mangeshkar’s house 1977 At Rehearsal of Movie ‘Pyar ke Rahi’ with Anuradha Paudwal 1980 With ‘Kishore Kumar’ With ghazal samrat ‘Jagjit Singh’ At the recording of ‘Qurbani’ 1979 with (Left) Feroz Khan & (Right) Kishore Kumar After a concert with ‘Shatrughan Sinha’ 1981 With Music Composer ‘Naushad Saheb’ 1984 With Ghazal Singer ‘Ghulam Ali’ Before a performance with Rishi Kapoor Portrait with Ghazal Maestro ‘Mehndi Hassan’