an article I found out on Junoon’s site!
ISHQ IS OUT!
22 hours. That’s all the time I have in Karachi. It’s Shehryar, the Junoon manager’s wedding reception. I have scissored through the serpentine red tape bordering India and Pakistan and watch me! I’m here, I’m here!
The sky has fallen on the Sunset Boulevard bungalow. Gold and silver stars twinkle everywhere–on the trees, on wedding finery, on the dewy lawn, in people’s eyes.
Suddenly 10,000 watts of sound explodes, searing the cool January night. Junoon has set up a concert in a capsule here. I can feel my Junoon-deficient cells plump up-last year’s album Parvaaz merely skimmed India. My nine-month-old baby shoots up on her wobbly legs and begins to clap, just about the only thing she knows to do besides saying byebyebyebye. She is still standing and clapping when her eyes shut from sleep at 2 am. But then, she has grown up thinking “Khudi”–that lofty, fiery poem-turned-song from 1998-- is a lullaby.
My baby is the youngest Junooni I know. But going by the sales of Junoon’s last two albums-Azadi and Parvaaz-I know there are at least a million others, whose adrenalin goes into overdrive as soon as three chalk-cheese-chocolate guys rev up their guitars and their throat. They can unleash the hormones. And never mind the hot flushes. Ishq is here.
Despite ten albums in ten prolific years, government bans, fanatic fans, controversies and subsequent small mercies, Junoon refuse to get repetitive or typecast. Refuse to follow the ‘sufi’ label stuck on them with superglue. Reject the idea of becoming empty icons. Resist the ease of reassembling hits like “Sayonee” -that sizzling single from Azadi which squatted on the top of Channel [V] and MTV Asia charts for over two months. Every year, every time, Junoon are still hot to the touch. And this time they are hot with love-of a different kind.
Not for Junoon a one-dimensional monochromatic lovelight. This is psychedelia like no chemical ever knew how to produce! A pyrotechnic passion that seeps through your skin like a caress, coils up inside you like an embrace, and then unfurls a thousand ballooning rays in an after-glow the sun would envy.
Appeasement? You will find it. In the throbbing flagration of Iqbal’s Saqinama, an anthem that marches to the mood of the millennium. In the cool blue lovelaced melody of “Ishq”. In the rocking, spitting, searching orange of “Chaen”. In the melting bubbling liquid of “Jaaney Tu”. In the lonely amber torment of “Meri Shaamein”. In the seething combustion of “Dharti Ke Khuda”, the fuming candescence of “Sheena”, the deceptively frisky metaphor of “Chal Kudiye”.
After the focused, almost thematic sound of Azadi and Parvaaz, Junoon have broken unpretentiously loose and easy. Instead of pinning butterflies on the wall into an organized display, they have let the winged rainbows fly in different directions. There is no theme, no agenda, no hole-in-the-wall slots. A live Roskilde recording of “Dosti” gets jiggy with a passionate, quivering instrumental, a reflective and allegorical “Sheeshe Ka Ghar” saunters along the haunting and lovelost “Meri Shaamein”.
And why not? This is honest-to-goodness music. No lies behind fluttering eyes. No sweet nothings wrapped with huge pink bows. This is the real thing. Each track takes you closer to the band’s heart, mind and soul. Each song takes wing like a teasing flame that licks at you-soft soft smooth smooth or hot hot burning burning, so you let go, like in love, and melt into the many upsy-downsy recesses of this album. Feeling giddy? Hey, let go. Abandon yourself. Surrender. Because here you have all the reason to. Salman renews his first romance-with the guitar. At worst, he is sensuous velvet, at best, he is a maniac with a musical mission-in mad, almost frenzied, love. His elastic strings pulsate against you, taking you to magical, mysterious places you’ve never been before. (Not for this much money, you haven’t!) Ali comes out of the closet as a composer. The shamanic singer trapezes into your consciousness with “Jaaney Tu”, “Meri Shaamein” and “Dharti Ke Khuda” and-resist him, if you can!–does amazing acrobatric things to your skin. . And Brian. Brian doesn’t just make music, he defies physics and creates greased lightning. Zigzags of solid electricity speed off his bass, on which Salman and Ali ride and whirl like neon spinners.
Ah no, the military hasn’t gotten here yet. This here is a democratic love. Instead of compressing all the musical elements into a high-density sedimentary rock, Ishq creates a slow-sparking volcanic place–hard rocky edges, bubbly boiling melody, liquid lava lyrics, vapours of sound smoke… everyone rules. “Ishq,” Salman tells me on email is, “the core element of all creation, and Junoon’s music comes out of this Ishq-this unabashed, uninhibited expression of love.” And what can I say about love that I can’t say about music? Both defy definition and analysis. In both, you should-mostly-listen! Both can take you to high heaven-or plunge you into hell. Every generation thinks only they did it right. They can both be expressed in any language… or no language at all. And most of all, love and music both respect no borders, no control … Goes a couplet: “Ishq par zor nahin, yeh woh aatish Ghalib (Love is a fire you cannot control, says Ghalib) Jo jalaye na jalay, aur bujhaye na baney…” (You can’t light it, and once lit, you can’t extinguish it)
Ishq, pyar, mohabbat, call it what you will, love will find a way… I should know. My baby is called Sayonee.
Vatsala Kaul New Delhi, 5.II.2001