S. Asia rockers hope to bridge U.S.-Pakistan gap
By Monica Eng
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 25, 2002
To many Americans, Karachi, Pakistan, is where journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered, where a bomb exploded near the U.S. consulate last summer and where sectarian violence runs amok.
But it is also home to Junoon, the hottest rock band in South Asia, a band that wants to show that its country is about much more than religious fanaticism.
"Just look at the elections and you can see the extreme religious parties never got more than 5 percent of the vote," says band leader Salman Ahmad in an interview before the recent Pakistani parliamentary elections that yielded modest but significant gains for religious parties. "Still, they are a lethal minority of thugs whose role from the beginning has been scaring people and terrorizing them."
In the late 1980s, "I was performing A-Ha's `Take On Me' in a college talent show. These religious fanatics came in and broke our instruments and the furniture," he remembers, laughing. "They must have taken the lyrics literally. And I thought it was the rockers who were supposed to destroy instruments and furniture."
A longtime rock fan who spent his teen years in New York (where he saw Led Zeppelin at Madison Square Garden in 1975), Ahmad is free with his words and displays a healthy sense of humor despite the serious political and spiritual themes in his anthemic rock that takes its inspiration from 12th Century devotional poetry.
His music, which he will bring to the Gateway Theater Friday, is called Sufi rock, an unlikely blend of Western guitar rock over South Asian rhythms and garnished with Sufi lyrics in Urdu and Punjabi.
But his latest songs have taken a surprising turn. On this tour -- Junoon's sixth of the U.S. -- Ahmad is reaching for a larger audience with a handful of English-language songs, including the anti-terrorism single "No More."
It's a risky move that some think could alienate the band's South Asian fans, but it's a risk Ahmad is willing to take.
"We will always sing in Urdu and Punjabi, but now I have a reason to write in English: to reach out to the English-speaking world who might have assumptions about Pakistanis," Ahmad said during a phone call from New York, where he was visiting former school buddies and recording new songs.
"A lot of people may think that singing in English [the language Ahmad starting writing songs in as a teen] is selling out. But we did this gig in D.C. with the video of `No More' and we got a great response from a mostly South Asian audience."
Mom wanted a doctor
Whatever the language, the music of Junoon (which is Urdu for "passion") is a tantalizing blend of genres that has sold 20 million records worldwide, earning the band superstar status in Pakistan and neighboring nuclear rival India.
But when Ahmad decided to drop out of medical school in the early '90s to pursue music, it seemed like a terrible idea.
"It broke my mother's heart," he says. "She wanted me to be a doctor and didn't see any future in music. And back then there was really no rock scene in Pakistan. It was mostly this easy listening synth pop."
But with the soaring voice of lead singer Ali Azmat and the songwriting and guitar work of Ahmad, the band took off almost immediately. Their song "Jazb e Junoon" ("The Spirit of Passion") was adopted as Pakistan's official song for the 1996 Cricket World Cup.
Their honeymoon with the Pakistani establishment wouldn't last long, though. In late 1996, the band's video for their single "Ehtesaab" ("Accountability") featured a polo pony dining at a luxury hotel and was widely viewed as an indictment of the corruption among governmental elites, specifically former Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto.
The song and video were swiftly banned from state TV.
"It was a spoof but they took it so seriously," Ahmad says.
More trouble was to come when Junoon was on a sold-out stadium tour of India behind their No. 1 album ("Azadi") in the middle of that country's nuclear testing in 1998.
At the time, Ahmad gave interviews, saying, "In a region mired with poverty and destitution, with millions of starving souls living in pitiful conditions, can we afford a nuclear arms race?
"Would it not be better for India and Pakistan to try to inspire each other in the areas of education, health and economic development? In Pakistan we don't have clean water, health or employment. How can we afford a nuclear bomb?"
Looking back on the comments, Ahmad says, "It seemed like common sense, but we couldn't believe how angry people were about those comments. It was mostly from the governments though, because at our concert in Chandigarh [India] that night, the fans were shouting, `We want cultural fusion, not nuclear fusion.'"
The Pakistani government didn't agree. Then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif banned Junoon's songs and videos from the Pakistani airwaves.
"They were supposed to be these democrats but Benazir and Sharif were fascists in that they wouldn't let people express themselves freely," says a man whose outspokenness has earned him censorship and death threats.
"That is one thing I will say for [Pakistani President] Pervez Musharraf: He knows that with the Internet and radio and satellite TV you can't control public opinion, so he has given us freedom of the press and expression and you don't see journalists being thrown in jail all the time. That is one of the biggest things that has changed."
Junoon is the only Pakistani band that took part in Daniel Pearl Music Day on Oct. 10. Worldwide concerts that day remembered the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted and killed in February by Islamic militants in Pakistan.
A New York Times story credited a continued belief among Pakistanis that Pearl was a spy.
"I don't think that is the case," Ahmad says.
"But we were happy to perform. Judea Pearl [father of Daniel] asked us and we feel for him, especially because this murder took place in our back yard, in Karachi. Danny had been a big music fan and had listened to `Parvaaz' [Junoon's 1999 release] and so if I can do anything to ease his father's pain and participate in this day, I want to. What happened was totally condemnable."
In 2001 Ahmad was named the UN goodwill ambassador on HIV/AIDS for Pakistan, where he says, "prevention is the only cure. People who make an average of $200 a year cannot afford $15,000 a year for treatment."
A familiar story
If the story of a spiritual/political rock band emerging from a land riven with sectarian violence sounds familiar, the similarities haven't been lost on Ahmad who has long been a fan of U2 and even got a surprise from its leader last August while checking his e-mail.
"I was going through e-mail and deleting the usual spam like Check out J.Lo' andSee Britney Spears' and so when I saw `Message from Bono,' I almost deleted it," Ahmad remembers. "I'm glad I didn't because it was a nice note" discussing Ahmad's suggestion during a UN concert last year for a concert that would feature musical icons from all hemispheres.
Despite the nuclear tensions and the continuing battle for Kashmir, Ahmad says that Indians and Pakistanis can get along on a people-to-people level and that Junoon's Pakistani fans have no problem with their success in India.
"Most Pakistanis know that Bollywood is the Mecca of the South Asian entertainment world," he says, "and so when they see a Pakistani band going over there, that is a huge feather."
Amir Khan, the Indian owner of Atlantic Video, one of Devon Avenue's biggest music outlets, says, "Indians and Pakistanis both like the band, which is unusual for a Pakistani band. Indians are slow-music lovers but if you ask anyone, they all know and love Junoon's song `Sayonee.' "
Following in the footsteps
With their incorporation of Sufi philosophy and openness to the West, Junoon is following in the footsteps of Pakistan's other big crossover success, the late qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
"He is one of my biggest inspirations," says Ahmad, who played with Khan. "He is the one who turned me on to qawwali in 1991. The other thing that turned me on about him was that he didn't have this East-West thing. He collaborated with Eddie Vedder and Peter Gabriel. He was like a child in his enthusiasm, everything was, like, `Wow.' "
Ahmad has woven many elements of qawwali into his rock anthems, likening the Sufi devotional music to the blues in its ability to "make people lose their heads; it is about freedom and complete abandonment."
But do ancient Sufi poets have anything relevant to say to today's rock audiences?
"Absolutely," says Ahmad. "What Rumi or Punjabi poets like Baba Bullah Shah sang about in the 12th Century is still important today: harmony among mankind, tolerance, love and celebrating life. You can't get more universal than that."
Expect to experience this sense of abandonment when the quintet brings its show Friday to the Gateway.
Ahmad says they always insist on having a dancing area right in front of the stage where he says, "It gets pretty crazy," comparing a typical Junoon show to "going to a Rolling Stones party where Led Zeppelin meets Ravi Shankar meets U2 and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan."
So, are English-language songs Junoon's future?
"You never know," he says. "9/11 brought a huge paradigm shift to my consciousness; it might be that I am coming back full circle."
