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Human Rights Group and South
Asian Rockers,
Junoon Make Music for
Peace
December 24, 2002
Last year, the Pakistani band Junoon became the first rock group to play at the
United Nations. It was a reflection of the group's devotion to using its music
to spread a message of peace and tolerance in South Asia and around the world.
Most recently, Junoon teamed up with a unique human rights organization called
Breakthrough, to produce a DVD of a "Concert for Peace." Mallika Dutt founded
Breakthrough in 2000 to enlist artists and producers in the creation of popular
culture that will promote human rights.
Last fall, human rights activist Mallika Dutt received an award from the New
York Asian Women's Center, at an event co-chaired by artist Yoko Ono. The award
recognized the Indian-born Ms. Dutt's work with Breakthrough, an organization
she founded to promote human rights, by creating music and popular culture.
Breakthrough's latest project is with Junoon, a Pakistani band popular
throughout South Asia, that blends western rock with the religious ecstasy of
traditional Sufi Muslim music.
"We got involved with Junoon after September 11 happened," Mallika Dutt said.
"It was a really important moment for us, particularly as South Asians in the
United States, to start putting out progressive Muslim voices and finding ways
to express both our anguish and our enormous sense of loss over what happened,
but also to counter some of the stereotypes that were developing as a result."
"They came and they said, 'There's no voice, people are criticizing that,
'Muslims aren't speaking out loud enough,'" said Junoon bandleader Salman Ahmad.
"So, we had amplifiers, and we figured we could crank up the message and say,
'We're all in this together, it's not this civilizational conflict between Islam
and the West.'"
Last September in New York, Breakthrough and Junoon, who also include Ashiq Ali
and Brian O'Connell, an American who lives in Pakistan, premiered the band's
first song in English, a plea for peace in response to the terrorist attacks of
9/11, inspired by a poem by New York writer Polar Levine.
"We shared the other Ground Zero's perspective," said Mr. Ahmad. "And in this,
there is hope for humanity, if we reach out. The grief, paranoia, that everybody
feels, and they want to hide, you can't hide any longer. You really have to
reach out, find out what that person who looks a little different from you, has
different-colored skin, what he's thinking about."
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