*Salman invited to speak at the U.N.'s HIV/AIDS CONFERENCE in Bangkok July 10th/11th *
Salman Ahmad is a doctor by training and a rock musician by profession. He went to school in Lahore’s Aitchison College and Tappan Zee High School in Tappan, NY (just outside of New York City).
After graduating from the U.S. he got his M.D./ M.B.B.S. from Pakistan’s prestigious King Edward Medical college. While in college he was also a member of Pakistan’s first pop band, Vital Signs, who wrote the gigantic pop anthem “Dil,Dil Pakistan”. The success of Dil Dil Pakistan made Salman and the Vital Signs into overnight pop stars. It was at this point when Salman decided that he was going to give up the stethoscope and pick up his guitar. He left the Vital Signs in 1990 and co-founded South Asia’s biggest Rock band, Junoon, with vocalist Ali Azmat.
Junoon has sold over 20 million albums world wide and has the distinction of being the first ever rock band to be invited to perform at the U.N. general assembly by the U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan.
In 2001 Salman was made U.N. spokesman for HIV/AIDs in Pakistan. He has personalized the “I care, do you” poster campaign by paraphrasing a popular Quranic saying “saving one life (from aids) is like saving the whole of humanity”. He has appeared on television, radio and in the print media and gone into colleges in Pakistan to hold seminars with faculty and students about HIV/aids awareness. On Junoon’s latest album Deewar he dedicated a very popular Junoon song “Khwab” to highlight the scourge of HIV/aids.
Salman is a passionate and committed artist/social activist who recently won an award for a documentary entitled, “Rockstar and the Mullahs”, which he did for the American and British television channels PBS and the BBC respectively.
Junoon has won Channel V’s “Best International Group Award” in India and has also been the subject of a VH-1 documentary, “Islamabad:Rock City” presented by Oscar winning Hollywood movie star Susan Sarandon.
Salman is currently working on an Indo-Pak peace video called “Ghoom Tana” which features bollywood stars Naseeruddin Shah, Shubha Mudgal and Nandita Das. It will be released in August, on Pakistan and India’s independence days.
Apart from being a music lover, Salman loves reading books, watching films and is a huge cricket fanatic.
This is what Salman said when he was asked to comment on this
Source: Official Junoon website