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Salman Ahmed discusses his
band, Junoon,
and his difficulties with
Pakistani mullahs
DAVE DAVIES, host:
The rock band Junoon, like a lot of bands, was started by a guy who'd seen Led
Zeppelin when he was 11 and wanted to be like Jimmy Page. The difference is that
Junoon came together in Pakistan. Its co-founder, Salman Ahmed, was living in
the States at the time. The band, which includes guitarist Ahmed, a Pakistani
lead singer and an American-born bass player has become a crossover success
playing to sold-out audiences in India and here in the US. The New York Times
called their music `Pakistani rock mixed with religious rapture.'
(Soundbite of music)
DAVIES: Salman Ahmed is a practicing Muslim and has set to music Sufi poems and
verses from the Koran. But within Pakistan, particularly in the northwest,
fundamentalist mullahs have instituted Sharia law, a strict code of Islam which
bans music and also requires women to wear veils. Ahmed set out to question the
mullahs and find out what other Pakistanis think about the music band. A new
documentary, "Junoon: The Rock Star and the Mullahs," traces his journey. It
airs on the PBS series "Wide Angle" this Thursday night. Terry spoke with Salman
Ahmed and asked him to describe the mullahs' crackdown.
Mr. SALMAN AHMED (Junoon): What they're doing is, you know, harassing people
like musicians and poets and common people who travel on buses. You know,
normally there's music being played on the buses. They've banned that and
they've also stopped music in restaurants, public places. It's kind of how it
was three years ago, four years ago when we were banned by Nawaz Sharif. It
wasn't a law but they would just--you know, it would be unwritten law that you
wouldn't allow concerts, you wouldn't allow people to get together in any public
place and listen to music.
TERRY GROSS, host:
When you went to Peshawar, you spoke to some mullahs about music. What kind of
arguments did they make for wanting to ban music? What did they tell you about
the evils of music?
Mr. AHMED: Well, the interesting thing is that they couldn't give me any
documentary evidence from the Koran where it says that music is prohibited in
Islam. But they would come back with, you know, that music promotes promiscuity.
It's vulgar, that it leads to obscenity and that's why it's haram in Islam.
GROSS: Did you try to counter the arguments that the mullahs gave you about
music?
Mr. AHMED: Absolutely.
GROSS: What would you say?
Mr. AHMED: My answer was that the adan, the call to prayer, is in the harmonic
minor scale, the raven scale(ph), and it's got melody, it's got rhythm and what
do you say about that? They said, `Well, that's not music. That's just
reciting.' In fact, you'll see mullahs and Islamic students, the Taliban, in
madrassas singing, but they don't call it singing. They say, `We're reciting.'
So it's like self-deception and denial, which, you know, they hide behind that
and whenever they see someone who's posing questions or asking questions through
the music, they'll come up with, you know, this is just Westernized or this is
haram, this is prohibited. So they don't really have an argument, an Islamic
argument for it.
GROSS: I could see where Junoon would be exactly what fundamentalists leaders
would be afraid of because, after all, you play these like big venues, the
equivalent of like stadium concerts where thousands of young people get together
and have a good time. I mean, it's like the recipe for cultural rebellion, which
is exactly what, you know, fundamentalist leaders do not want.
Mr. AHMED: You know, Pakistan's been struggling for its soul, Terry. I believe
the vast majority of Pakistanis, who are Muslims, you know, who are maybe even
conservatives, but they don't agree with the mullahs version of Islam, which
they feel is an alien implant of Islamic culture, you know. They look at it as
coming from Saudi Arabia. Most of the Muslims living in Pakistan, they practice
Islam which is--you know, you don't need a priest to go to. You have a direct
personal relationship with God. But the mullahs have, through, you know, the
last 34 years, worked with military dictators, with so-called Democrats and they
just have a very heavy presence in the country. I believe them to be this sort
of lethal minority of thugs who just--you know, like a Mafia, they harass
people.
GROSS: When you were growing up, what was your family's approach to Islam?
Mr. AHMED: Well, my mother moved in 1947. She came from India. And my father is
from Lahore and they always had music, you know. I mean, my mother had a mass
collection of, you know, records which were from traditional sources, modern
sources, you know, Jewish folk music. There was never, ever a question in
our--you know, in my grandparents' house, both my grandparents' house--that we
have to cloister ourselves or, you know, separate ourselves from the rest of the
world. In fact, my mother was 16 years old and she saw this ad in the paper of
American Field Services offering this opportunity for, you know, Pakistani
students to come to America and spend a year there and, you know, go to high
school. And she proposed it to my grandparents and, you know, they had no
problem. This was in the early '60s. My mother came to Oakland, California,
lived with an American family, was eventually prom queen and, you know, I have
got a lot of the letters that she exchanged with her mother at that time. There
was never a question of--you know, that there's some struggle between Islam and
Christianity or Islam and America. And this is something which is--you know, I
think being planted in the minds of people through--I think a lot of it has to
do with getting political power. A lot of it has to do with wanting to keep
people in the dark.
GROSS: You moved with your family to the United States when I think you were in
high school.
Mr. AHMED: Yeah, junior high school.
GROSS: Junior high school. Your father worked for an airline, so your family
lived all over the world for a while. So when you lived in the United States,
you heard Led Zeppelin and fell in love with the band and their music and that
kind of sent you in a new direction. What did you hear in Led Zeppelin that you
found so life-changing?
Mr. AHMED: Well, it was--first of all, I mean, I was 11 years old and my
friend's elder brother took us to Madison Square Garden. And this was back in
'77. And, you know, I mean, just first rock concert and you see a guy on stage
with--you know, Jimmy Page, double-neck guitar, long hair. You know, he's got
dragons painted on his pants. And, you know, just that image just totally blew
my mind, you know, and I just decided, you know, I want to become that.
GROSS: You returned to Pakistan with your family in 1982 and this was during the
era that the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan and that was having an impact
on the whole region. After you returned to Pakistan, you know, modeling yourself
on heavy metal bands, learning how to play guitar, changing the way you looked,
what kind of adaptations did you have to make when you got back home?
Mr. AHMED: You know, it was in the middle of a military dictatorship which is
supported by the United States, General Zia-ul-Haq, which for me, in his 11
years of rule, he set back that country 100 years. But because he was, you know,
allied with the United States and fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, you had
basically, you know, the darkest age in Pakistan history. At that time we
wanted--you know, we had no youth entertainment. We were in college and what
we'd do is just play music for ourselves. As long as we covered Western
songs--you know, we were singing, you know, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the
USA" or Bon Jovi or whoever, it didn't bother the establishment or the mullahs.
It's just that when we started singing original music and reaching out to a
wider audience, that's when they thought that, you know, `We've got to put an
end to this.' And I remember the first time we did a talent show, a lot of these
extremists came and they broke the instruments. They broke the furniture,
similar actually to what's happening in Peshawar now. This is like a bad
nightmare which keeps repeating.
DAVIES: Terry Gross speaking with Salman Ahmed of the Pakistani rock band Junoon.
He's featured in the documentary about a crackdown on music by fundamentalist
mullahs that airs Thursday night on PBS. More after a short break. This is FRESH
AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
DAVIES: Back to Terry's interview with Pakistani's rock star Salman Ahmed. Ahmed
is guitarist for the band Junoon, which has been around since 1990. Before that
he played in a band named Vital Signs.
GROSS: In 1987, there was a nationwide songwriting contest to write a patriotic
song and you actually won the contest with a song called "We Love Pakistan."
What were the lyrics? Can you give us an English translation?
Mr. AHMED: Well, I mean, it's a really soppy lyric but what it did do was that
it--you know, it's really difficult to have a literal translation, but in a
nutshell, it said, you know, `We are Pakistani. We love Pakistan and we're
modern.' And the video that went along with that actually showed us, you know,
just driving around in Jeeps, wearing jeans, T-shirts and it, you know,
accidentally got on the air because it was a national song. And I guess the
mullahs who were on the censor board didn't even look at it because they
figured, you know, I mean, only a national song is, you know, 20, 30 people,
kids standing like zombies and saying `We love Pakistan.' They didn't look at
this video. The video got out and just overnight it just ignited something in
people. You know, I mean, remember going back to college and, you know, you'd be
stopped everywhere, recognized, asked for autographs. And it was the first ever,
like, pop song from a pop band, which, you know, became number one. And that
made me think, you know, that you could really bring a lot of change through
music and, subsequently, I left Vital Signs and formed Junoon to do that.
GROSS: So what are the members of Vital Signs doing now? Are they still playing
music?
Mr. AHMED: Well, it's interesting that--you know, the lead singer. Vital Signs
was like a boy band, you know, and a lot of adulation from girls. The lead
singer, Junaid, he's been worked on by religious fundamentalists and they've
told him that, you know, you should become a Pied Piper for Islam, you know, not
for music. And there's a lot of confusion in his head and that's happened in the
last couple of years.
GROSS: So he's thinking of giving up music?
Mr. AHMED: He's confused, you know. I mean, he's confused with this thing that
how could it be that what I'm part of and what I earn my money from is not part
of my faith? And I've had deep discussions with him and, you know, at the end of
the discussion, what happens is a guitar comes out and he starts singing. But
then again, you know, when he goes back to his life, you know, the mullahs are
just around him and they just surround him.
GROSS: Do you feel like your day-to-day life, you know, the day-to-day world
around you has changed a lot since September 11th?
Mr. AHMED: I felt a paradigm shift in my consciousness. I mean, you know, here
were two of my worlds, Karachi and New York, colliding with each other and this
hate virus spreading everywhere in all directions. And then, you know, you
realize, `Oh, God, you know, these terrorists belong to, you know, my faith.'
And now everybody's thinking that, you know, my faith has to do with terrorism.
I mean, you know, people rushing to conclusions. It changed my life I think
forever and in a way that, you know, I never sort of was prepared for and I'm
still trying to make sense of it, because while in Pakistan I have to fight
with, you know, the mullah mentality, when I go outside of Pakistan, you know,
you're being looked upon with deep suspicion. You know, you say you're Muslim
and, you know, all of a sudden the whole atmosphere changes. I mean, we tour in
America, just finished a tour. It's really difficult to be natural anymore
and...
GROSS: What do you mean?
Mr. AHMED: Well, in the sense that, you know, you start a conversation with
strangers--I mean, if you're waiting for a plane or, you know, you're in a
restaurant and people look at you and they look at your name being Salman, it's
like they're hesitant. There's a lot of fear in the United States. I mean, after
9/11, there's a lot of fear of, you know, what's out there. And similarly, in
Pakistan and the Islamic world, there's a lot of fear about the United States.
And in between, like I'm straddling these universes and trying--sort of bridging
it for myself, you know, for my own sanity.
GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.
Mr. AHMED: You're welcome.
DAVIES: Terry Gross speaking with Salman Ahmed, lead guitarist of the band
Junoon.
(Credits)
DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies. Now here's Junoon's "No More." The
words come from a poem a New Yorker named Polar Levine gave Salman Ahmed after
the events of September 11.
(Soundbite of "No More")
JUNOON: (Singing) In my lungs through my windows, on my head on the floor, ashes
of falling hope choking me inside these doors. Stormy winds seduce the night
over New York and Karachi skies, sinking in a sea of time mourning since 11/9.
PBS Fresh Air
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