SINGING A DIFFERENT TUNE
The voice is still soft, romantic, mesmerizing. It’s the words that have changed. Rather than crooning ballads for a beloved, extolling the virtues of the armed forces or stirring patriotic fervor, Junaid Jamshed is now singing a different tune altogether. The Pakistani pop icon who poured his heart into the phenomenal Dil Dil Pakistan, a patriotic song he sang as lead singer of Pakistan’s pioneering boy band vital signs back in 1987, is of late devoting himself to his new love Islam. Comparisons to sixties British pop musician cat Stevens, who became yousuf Islam when he renounced stardom at the pinnacle of success to embrace Islam, are inevitable. Like Stevens, Jamshed’s music has taken a backseat and his priority is his desire to preach Islam and to share what he has learned with others. There are tell-tale signs of Jamshed’s ‘reawakening’ everywhere. A folded prayer mat lying on a pile of shirts stacked against the wall of his tiny office, an Islamic calendar on his desk, a pile of religious volumes on his table, and the entry “deeni (religious) activity” on a daily planner.
The deeni activity is undoubtedly his attachment with the Tableeghi jamaat, an association of Muslim scholars with reformist agenda for the Muslim Ummah (nation).
What makes a musician who has tasted fame and fortune, and for whom the worlds an oyster, want to give all that up for a lifestyle devoid of luxury, fortune and the adulation of a nation?
''I took up music because it appealed to my heart then now, deen (religion) and tableegh (preaching) appeal to my heart, " Jamshed says, as if stating a simple and inevitable truth.
Just as he found himself growing more and more passionate about his music in his youth, he now feels religion assuming that all - important place in his life.
Jamshed’s love of music developed through the influence of his close friends Rohail Hyat and Shahzad Hasan. “They were my best friends and they used to make music. We would listen to pink Floyd and Phil Collins and the Police,” he says.
Jamshed, who did not play any instrument at the time, felt somewhat deprived of the joy that comes of not just listening to music but being able to make music.
So he bought a guitar and began to play. "But there was nobody to sing with me, so I started singing, and that’s when Rohail started telling me I had a great voice, " he recalls.
The trio became a foursome when Nusrat Hussain joined and in no time, they became really popular in Islamabad . But the phenomenon that was the Vital Signs happened with their ‘discovery’ by ace TV producer Shoaib Mansoor.
After hearing them at a concert, Mansoor invited them to sing a patriotic song for Independence Day. When the band refused saying they would not stand before a (Pakistani) flag, Mansoor replied he would not make them. “I’ll portray you guys the way you are,” Mansoor told us, recalls Jamshed.
It took a week to write Dil Dil Pakistan and another week to record it. What none of them, except maybe Mansoor, realized then was that it would be such a success?
Their music electrified the nation because they enjoyed music; their music was enjoyed. Vital Signs became icons for an entire. Vital Signs became icons for an entire generation of Pakistani youth yearning for clean entertainment ---- teenagers who enjoyed Western music yet found its language, idiom and themes alien.
Vital Signs gave them music with an appealingly Western sound yet an eastern soul. Their music talked of dusky-skinned damsels (Sanwali) and fair ladies (Gori), of love innocent and pure (Yeh shaam), of blushing brides with hennaed hands (Mehndi Ki Raat), and of die-hard patriotism (Dil Dil Pakistan).
Here at last was music that talked of young dreams and young aspirations in a language that the young could understand, and relate to.
Somewhere along the strumming of guitars and pressing of keys on electric organs, their fingers had managed to find the throbbing pulse of the nation’s young and restless. And the Vital Signs became an overnight sensation.
But for Jamshed, it was perhaps his early training in Quranic recitation that was to prove prophetic — an omen of where it would eventually return.
For six years during his enrolment at Air force school in Karachi, Jamshed practiced qirat (Quran recitation) with his Islamiat teacher. " He would tell me how to deliver the words of the Quran, how to start, where to leave off, where to take the pitch high or low, "says Jamshed.
The training nurtured his voice; preparing it for the career in music and singing that later beckoned him.
His voice still holds that power – to influence and beguile. But there is an added softness, a sense of awe, of gratitude and above all of Divine love in Jamshed’s voice as he talks of his new purpose.
"At one point in time, music was the real aim of my life Everything else was secondary, "explains Jamshed. He believes it was a Supreme act of mercy on the part of Allah Almighty that he was shown the folly of the path he was treading.
“If this friend of mine hadn’t come into my life, I probably just would have gone on and on and on.” And for the second time in his life, it was a friend’s influence that beckoned Jamshed towards his new calling.
Though for a while he sported a beard and his shalwars are still worn well above the ankle, as was Prophet Mohammad’s (peace be upon him) practice, Jamshed’s appearance does not conform to that of Tableeghi Jamaat members. But when he says of his music, " I’m slowly and gradually losing the fire, " with an expression that is wistful but not resentful, it is obvious that his heart has begun to let go.
"In music, you just fade away. Everybody in showbiz has faded away. They have realized they are not wanted anymore. The greatest of performers have actually been booted out in time when others have come to take their place, " Jamshed philosophies.
" That is what I was made to realize, and that gave me inner peace. That this inevitably has to happen. So if it is inevitable, then this can’t be the real aim of my life.
"Whether I had come to terms with Islam as a religion or not, I just knew I couldn’t have been dancing on stage at 60, or even 50, or even 40. I’m already 36. I’ve cut down on my concerts drastically, " he explains.
So, just as music had come into his life and pushed everything else into the background, meeting Muslim scholars and members of the Tableeghi Jamaat gradually won his heart.
"My priorities started changing. I started doing a lot of things against my will, against my nafs, my khwahisaat (desires). I started training myself from within. I, who was used to frequenting
Five-star hotels started visiting the mosque. For the first time, I did away with all that. I would sleep on the floor. I probably slept the soundest then. "
Jamshed hasn’t given up music altogether and an album is in the works, due to be launched early next year. But where it was once his occupation, it has now more or less a hobby. His name still sells, however, and he has developed a line of casual and formal men swear that he supplies to several outlets in the country.
He says he enjoys designing, and it provides an alternative — and perhaps less controversial from the point of view of his newfound religious conscience — career to music, But it is when talks of Islam and the preaching of it that Jamshed sound truly inspired. “It’s very unfortunate that … the virtues behind the teachings (of Islam) are something we never actually talk about.
" The Muslim today knows very little about his own religion. Many people come and ask me, why we don’t convert non-Muslims.
" That is not what I want to do. What if the entire world today converts to Islam? Are we ready to teach them what they have to do now that they are Muslims? None of us is. When we are not ready to better our own selves, how can we save the entire world?”