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Ali Azmat : Making of a
Legend
By Mahvish Akhtar
Ali Azmat
We all grow up with ideals and role models. When younger, we know whom we want
to be like and whom we don’t want to be like. And then there are crushes; they
are either on a rock star or on the boy who checks out our groceries at Kroger.
I have had both. And let me just say that the rock star crushes last much longer
because you eventually get to know the boy at your grocery store or at your
school and find out that he is not so perfect after all. Famous people however,
remain perfect and untouched. I am all grown up now (so they tell me at least)
and I still can’t stand any one talking bad about the famous guy I had a crush
on. But the interesting thing is that he is not just a crush. He is a role
model, someone I admire, and someone who gives me a weird sense of security, and
a crush all rolled up in one. And this status gets very complicated. There is
more at stake for the person infected by it; either your heart will break when
you grow up and find out that the person you thought was so cool is not so cool
after all. Or you will turn out like me and defend a complete stranger leaving
people to think that you have completely lost your mind.
I have always wondered about this phenomenon and wanted to explore it and find
out why humans do such things. Why another person who is mostly just like us
becomes the object of our unconditional love and affection. In my effort to find
out I came across a man who has become a legend in his own right and has the
kind of power over his fans only legends do. That got me thinking as to what
makes a legend? As I understood it In the Music business you either have to be
dead or have to be doing your thing for decades while avoiding becoming
yesterday’s news. Marilyn Manson wrote once in an article in the Rolling Stones
that, “A dead rock star becomes perfect, and he’ll be that forever. He’ll never
change, never get old, never turn into something less great than at his peak, at
the moment of his death.” Having said that let me talk to you about this rock
star that is not dead. He is still pretty young, and has been in this business
for only about 15 years, yet his fans have immortalized him. So what is it about
Ali Azmat that makes his fan look up to him as though he could walk on water?
There are many Junoon fans out there. Azmat has a fan base of his own that
supports him with or without Junoon. When I asked one of his fans what it was
about him he told me to listen to one of the songs he sang with my eyes closed,
in a quit room and I will know. I did that, he has a powerful voice but I still
wasn’t ready to devote my life to worshipping him, I guess practice makes
perfect! Talha, a 19-year-old fan told me that Azmat’s style is different from
rest of the singers and he is not just a good performer but a nice person too.
That he says he knows because every time he has met Azmat, he has treating him
very well. Saeed, another fan had stories to tell about Azmat and the times he
spent with him. All those stories led up to the fact that he was nice and
friendly and down to earth. So, is it that he is a nice guy? There are many
people that are nice. He is surely not the only person. Most people who admire
him come to do so after just watching him perform or hearing him only once.
These fans have been cheering him on for decades. Talha tells me that it’s his
unique style that sets him apart from the rest. Rabab tells me that it’s his
looks after his voice that makes him so appealing to her.
This is not all. All of them were unanimous in the decision that Ali Azmat has
not made any mistakes in his career or even his personal life as far as they
know. When I pointed out a couple of things that could be considered mistakes
almost all of them responded by saying that people don’t get him because he is
too cool for them. So, they told me that I am looking at this as a mistake
because I just don’t understand how cool he is and don’t have the kind of faith
in him that I should. And even if they do admit that he has made a mistake they
always justified it by saying that it was blown out of proportion. When asked
what could Azmat do to make them dislike him I was told by one of them, “I think
Ali has done enough since 1991 to make me respect him for years to come…I don’t
think he can do anything really to make me disrespect him or dislike him.”
If you are thinking this is going too far let me ad to you dismay by telling you
that most of his fans want him to get married because they want him to have
children. When asked why they are so interested in his children, again, the
unanimous response was so that his legacy can continue. Ali Azmat is not just a
legend ladies and gentlemen he is an epidemic! You are very right in thinking
that this is too much power for a person who has been in business for a short
period of time. Well, especially for someone who has been in the business a
short period of time and not dead, and rest assure that Azmat is alive and
kicking.
Maybe it’s just his immense talent. But then again there are many people out
there who have just as much, if not more, talent. It seems as though Azmat and
people like him are a mystery. Why did I think that that one rock star was
perfect and why do Ali Azmat’s fans think that he is perfect? Why can’t he do
any wrong and why has he reached the status of divinity in this way? Then I had
a chance to talk to Ali Azmat himself, which made me realize a couple of things
that I had overlooked. We seem to put all the pressure on the fans; we forget
that the person being idealized has some hand in what gets done to them.
Although, Ali Azmat told me over and over again that he does not “give a shit”
about most of it, and that he concentrates on his work tuning most of the hoopla
out I think it would be foolish to deny the instant pleasure that comes from
this kind of power. Also, when one is put on a pedestal its hard not to feed off
of it, and give some feed back in assurance that this continues. Azmat claims,
“I don’t really take it seriously that well because the first rule is that one
has to separate the whole thing in order to fulfill the artistic side of it. If
you get caught up in what people think of you [it] is kind of detrimental.”
When asked why people do look up to him in this way he seemed lost. He was not
sure what it was. In his opinion, maybe its because he is able to express
himself the way he wants and since in “our culture” (which in his opinion is
most Asian cultures) there is a lot of worrying about what people will think, in
that sense he is a freeing experience for people, and people respect him for
that. “That is the kind of thing that ends up attracting them I guess”, he says.
Mostly, however, Azmat says that flattery doesn’t flatter him any more, “It sort
of became a part of the job…When somebody says something I am always thinking
there is some pun intended here or something, maybe they don’t really like me
but they are saying it, so you don’t put too much faith into what people are
trying to say.” Maybe that’s part of his charm that nothing gets to him or that
he doesn’t let other people have an effect on him. He explains it in these
words, “People know that they like you and they know that this other person (in
this case it is Ali Azmat himself) is not really pushed about it so it sort of
propels their passion a little bit more. If I was thankful and sort of willing
to accept that kind of [aggilation] at all times then it wont matter anymore to
them.” However, he did admits that this enigma around him is somewhat created,
“because I don’t really get them (the fans) and I am not really interested.
Either people fear the unknown or are interested in the unknown, so I think they
just want to know what is there.”
While it seems that he enjoys who and what he is, still it is difficult when one
is seeing as faultless. “I don’t know if one can live with that kind of pressure
also, so the best thing to do is not to take that pressure and just keep doing
what you are doing other wise if you worry about that stuff too much that would
drive me nuts... that is a huge responsibility someone thinking like that. If
somebody thinks that you cant do any wrong then you better not do any wrong.”
I had probed him about others’ opinions about him and now it was time to find
out what really IS going on in that head of his. So, who or what were Azmat’s
obsessions growing up you ask. In his own words, “Musically, yes a lot of
people, but not philosophically or in any other way, like the way of life or
whatever. But musically, yes there were a lot of people, such as Freddie
Mercury, which is like a musical genius. I identify with songwriters more then
anybody else in the world…Otherwise there is not one person that I would be
obsessive about, no.” When asked about what his obsessions are right now he
said, “right now I have obsession to just write music and get busy because I
start going crazy when I am not doing anything. I just want to go home and
record some music and chill out and keep traveling, keep doing what I am doing.”
Azmat knows exactly what he is doing and he knows how to deal with the pressures
of becoming what he has become. He says that he has a switch inside which he
turns off and on as needed. While it seems really hard to do I can believe that
he does it. How else would someone like him keep his feet on the ground? Does he
have his feet on the ground? He says he does, “At the end of the day you have to
calm yourself down as a human being also, you have to know that it’s just a
job.” He also claims that he is a very humble person. Maybe his humbleness comes
from the fact that he doesn’t really know what a big deal he is otherwise it
would be hard for him to be humble. ‘I don’t know if its going to upset them
(the fans) or anything but I do keep myself away from feeling godly or whatever
or being the idol to thousands or millions or whatever.” It is obvious that when
we pick our idols, we turn them into something that they are not. Azmat wants
his fans to know that contrary to popular belief that he is a ’Restless Soul’,
“I am actually not so restless, I am actually calm collected. I am inside of
myself rather then outside of myself. I guess I live outside too but I am more
of an inside person. That’s what they wonder about that what the fuck is going
on inside his head. They want to know that and that’s where curiosity comes in,
and it creates some kind of enigma.”
So, what is the outcome of all this? I found out many things, a lot of which
were about Ali Azmat. But along with that I found out that these idols and
obsessions are not real people. These are figments of our imaginations that are
dressed up like someone we like or know or see on TV. Ali Azmat may not be all
that his fans make him out to be. But they believe it and they need to believe
it because they need something to hold on to. That’s it! It’s our struggle to
hold on to something in life. And those of us who cant find something real to
hold on to we hold on to those people who can be whatever we want them to be for
us without asking for much in return. “Its not so much me as them because they
look at you they give you that kind of power for you to do anything or say
anything and get away with it” Azmat articulates.
While the people we are holding on to let us hold on to them for different
reasons, it is us who give them the power to do so. This sometimes can be
dangerous. One of Azmat’s fans told me proudly that he is making the same
“mistake” as Azmat himself, granted he was just talking about shaving his head
to look like him, but not all fans follow only the harmless trades. I remember
when Cobain shot himself, all of a sudden it was cool to try and commit suicide
or at least talk about it. In the same way Jim Morrison made getting high and
acting obnoxious cool. Some people put 100% of the responsibility on the artists
and other puts complete responsibility on the fans. I think this responsibility
is shared. The artists let their fans believe whatever they want because they
get to pay their bills that way. And the artists believe in a person blindly
because they need something to cling to. We all need to stop and think of what
we are making of the other and realize that people’s lives, whether it is
someone famous or a 14-year-old girl, are not something to be toyed with for
some bucks or a fake sense of security.
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