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Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star's Revolution
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About Rock & Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star's Revolution
Product description "The story you are about to read is the story of a light-bringer....Salman Ahmad inspires me to reach always for the greatest heights and never to fear....Know that his story is a part of our history." -- Melissa Etheridge, from the Introduction With 30 million record sales under his belt, and with fans including Bono and Al Gore, Pakistanborn Salman Ahmad is renowned for being the first rock & roll star to destroy the wall that divides the West and the Muslim world. Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey. Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi - rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman's story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious -- and stratified -- society. He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north. Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia's biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis. As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald's, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a "rainbow bridge" that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman's star from rising. Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West -- lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir. From Publishers Weekly The rise of Pakistan's most popular rock musician—unfamiliar to most Americans—is the subject of this well-meaning autobiography. Ahmad, the leader of the band Junoon, recounts his wealthy upbringing at an elite British school in Lahore and then as a Beatles obsessed teenager in New York. He describes his return to Pakistan in the midst of General Zia's military dictatorship, which introduced fundamentalist Muslim codes of conduct into public life. Ahmad is at his best describing the mishmash of 1960s American rock, '80s pop songs and Bollywood music that made up the repertoires of Pakistan's youth musicians in that same decade. Ahmad joins a band called the Vital Signs, which sweeps the country with its patriotic rock song Dil Dil Pakistan, even getting to meet Benazir Bhutto after her election. He leaves the group at the height of its fame to pursue artistic freedom and becomes even more popular with Junoon and its hit song Jazba-e-Junoon, which was the official song of the cricket World Cup. In what is well-intentioned but ultimately clichéd and egocentric memoir, Ahmad describes his more recent years as a self-appointed musical ambassador for peace, standing up for Muslims on Bill Maher's TV show and playing a concert at the U.N. General Assembly Hall, while still finding time to show Mick Jagger the Pakistani nightlife. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Ahmad offers a fascinating glimpse into the complicated existence of a Pakistani whose unconventional life bridges the Muslim world and the West. As a teenager living in a New York City suburb, he fell in love with rock, dreamed of playing guitar in a band, and though his parents looked down upon what they thought was a ridiculous fantasy, determined to wage “a rock and roll jihad.” He formed bands in both America and Pakistan, eventually transforming himself into a Pakistani national icon. He played the first-ever rock concert in war-torn Kashmir and, in December 2007, became the first Pakistani musician to perform at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. He fills his story with colorful, often funny anecdotes of such incidentals as squiring Mick Jagger around Lahore (Jagger was in town attending World Cup play) and witnessing the 50-something rocker gyrate with a local dancing girl. Other anecdotes, especially after 9/11, are more somber. A hopeful, sensitive memoir in which music functions as a healing bond between peoples and cultures. --June Sawyers Review " Rock & Roll Jihad is the fascinating story of the evolution of a new kind of planetary citizen. Salman Ahmad's band, Junoon, can boast of being the most popular rock group in South Asia -- but its larger signifi cance is that music, poetry, politics, and humanitarianism have been the core elements of Salman's personal quest.... I hope in reading this book that you are inspired to take your own journey of mystery, wonder, enchantment, and most important of all, healing. The greatest gift an artist can possess is the ability to raise the consciousness of his audience. Salman Ahmad has dedicated himself to transformation, and in that I join hands with him in gratitude and hope." -- Deepak Chopra "In these troubled times of cultural misunderstanding, there are peace talks -- and also peace rock. Salman Ahmad's memoir, Rock & Roll Jihad, describes his own jihad, his struggle with the multiple crises in the world, and his own youthful idealism. Rather than throw up his hands at what look to be irreparable divides, Ahmad turns to the nature of kinship within families and world communities. He moves from idealism to changemaker as a medical doctor, a UN ambassador for both AIDS and peace between Pakistan and India, and the founder and singer in South Asia's biggest rock band, Junoon. As Ahmad shows, rock & rock diplomacy can create instant kinship. It may be one of the best ways for the youth of the world -- the future -- to set aside the old history of fear and mistrust and just get down and rock out together." -- Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club " Rock & Roll Jihad is not just the story of a young man's incredible journey to becoming a rock star. It is also the story of how that young man also became a hero, risking it all to stand up against intolerance and hatred. Read this book and be inspired!" -- P. W. Singer, Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings, and author of Wired for War " Rock & Roll Jihad is a gorgeously written and endlessly entertaining book that reminds one of both the incredible power of music to encourage positive social change and how deep the cultural connections between the U.S. and Muslim world have long been. Rock & Roll Jihad will forever change the way you think about the Muslim world, the war on terror, and rock & roll to boot. An absolutely essential read for anyone concerned about the future relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. Salman Ahmad's beautiful writing style is the perfect complement to his electrifying guitar playing; if his seminal band Junoon is known as the 'U2 of Asia,' this book will launch him as the Bono of commentators on the common future of our hopelessly entangled civilizations." -- Mark LeVine, author of Heavy Metal Islam "...Has found a way to bridge bitter divides...There is something unusually compelling about his combination of total coolness, gentle innocence and self-deprecating humor." — Sally Quinn, The Washington Post "A revolutionist of our own time...[who] perseveres and never stops believing that music and the arts can help heal his country's violent and short history...What I love about Rock & Roll Jihad is not only the story of Ahmad's success against all odds, but how his journey is intertwined with Pakistan's and the effect they have on each other." — Northwest Asian Weekly About the Author Salman Ahmad is a Pakistani rock star whose band Junoon has sold over 25 million albums. A medical doctor by training, Salman currently travels the globe as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, spreading a message of harmony and reconciliation between the West and the Muslim world. He was a featured performer at the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, alongside musical superstars such as Alicia Keys, Melissa Etheridge and Annie Lennox. He currently teaches a course on Muslim music and poetry at the City University of New York’s Queens College campus. Salman spends his free time moving between Pakistan and Rockland County, New York, with his wife Samina and their three sons. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ONEThe Taliban and the Guitar On a cool, clear November morning in 1982, I woke up in my bedroom in Lahore, filled with anticipation. A little more than a year earlier, my parents, siblings, and I had returned to Pakistan after six years in America. That evening, I would finally break out my long-unused sunburst Les Paul and play before a live audience of my medical school classmates at our college talent show. My plan was to channel the eighties guitar hero Eddie Van Halen and perform “Eruption”—and to blow everybody away as only that classic one-minute, 42-second guitar solo could. Consumed by a musical passion, I threw on my white doctor’s overalls and grabbed my anatomy and physiology books and headed for the door. I was eighteen years old. The sweet smell of jasmine greeted me as I stepped outside and climbed into my beat-up, rusting yellow Mazda, the consolation prize given to me by my father for having taken me away from the life I loved in Tappan, New York. My parents and siblings had settled in the southern port city of Karachi while I had moved in with my mother’s parents at 54 Lawrence Road for my studies. That hopeful morning, I drove down Mall Road, the main city thoroughfare, and into the cyclone that is Lahori traffic: an anarchic scrum of blue rickshaws, horse-drawn tongas, bicyclists wearing shalwar kameez (long shirt over baggy trousers), and Japanese motorbikes and cars all flouting the cops and running red lights. Navigating the chaotic roads, I motored past the palatial Punjab governor’s mansion and Jinnah’s Garden, the beautiful park known as Lawrence Gardens during the colonial Raj. I gazed for a second at the gymkhana where I often played cricket. Its picturesque ground was encased in pine and eucalyptus trees and its pavilions were lined with red tiles. My eyes were still re-adjusting to the sights of Pakistan, and all of this looked like a scene right out of a dream. My parents had enrolled me in Lahore’s King Edward Medical College in the hope that I would give up my teenage fantasies of being a rock musician and adopt a respectable profession. They had been patient and even supportive when I joined Eclipse, our high school garage band in Tappan, founded by my Tappan Zee High School buddies Brian O’Connell and Paul Siegel. And they’d been sincerely happy when we won our high school’s battle of the bands in 1980. But as I sat in the lecture hall that day, my old life in America was a world away and I was just another young Pakistani studying anatomy—albeit one who was constantly humming the chorus of “Helter Skelter” and “Revolution.” About two years earlier, my father’s brother-in-law, Ismat Anwar, had visited us at our home in Tappan. At the behest of my parents, Dr. Anwar, a leading Pakistani surgeon, had a man-to-man talk with me about my career plans. I sat across from the serious-looking Uncle Anwar in my small room, focusing my bored gaze past him on the poster of Jimi Hendrix on my wall. With a shrug of my shoulders, I told my uncle that I didn’t know about the future. But I knew that I wanted to rock. “Rock? What does that mean, beta (son)?” Dr. Anwar asked in his Punjabi-inflected English. I tried to explain in my New York accent. “Uncle, I just want to play guitar and be in a band for the rest of my life. That’s my dream. Just like these guys,” I said, pointing to the life-size posters of Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, and Van Halen covering the walls of my room in our house on Lester Drive. My uncle took a look around at all the color posters in amazement, as Lennon and McCartney, Hendrix, Plant, Page, and Jagger seemed to strike poses of silent support. Uncle Anwar pointed incredulously to the long-haired musicians playing guitars and exclaimed, “Salman mian [young man], you want to become a mirasi [low-class musician]? Your parents have high expectations of you and you want to waste the rest of your life playing this tuntunna [gizmo]?” He shook his open palms in the direction of my sunburst Les Paul, which rested proudly against the back of my guitar amplifier in the corner of my room. Before I could answer I was saved by a car honking outside. It was Brian, come to take me to band practice. I ran out of the room carrying my amplifier in one hand and my guitar in the other. Freed from the interrogation, I yelled back, “I have to go, Uncle, our band Eclipse is rehearsing for the Tappan Zee High School battle of the bands!” I escaped, but Uncle Anwar’s words had unsettled me. It was only a matter of months until the other shoe dropped and my parents told me we were all going back to Pakistan. I was already reeling from two of my heroes’ deaths, and now I had to face a forced march back to the motherland. That winter, I’d been devastated by the tragic killing of John Lennon, and had mourned the loss of drummer John Bonham of Led Zeppelin not long before. Both Zeppelin and the Beatles had been like close friends and teachers to me over the past six years. I had jammed with them with the head phones on, dissecting their guitar riffs. I had tried to mimic their impossibly cool fashions and belted out their tunes in front of my mirror at high decibels. I’d sung along with Robert Plant to Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or “Kashmir,” and crooned “Day Tripper” or “A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles. As a Pakistani kid who’d struggled with integrating into American life, rock and roll fed my soul and steered me toward a personal centeredness. Looking at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see a Pakistani, an American, or a Muslim, or anyone who fit into a single label or category. I just imagined myself standing onstage, playing my guitar and making people happy. And that was all I wanted. But in the summer of 1981, the clock was ticking. I dodged reality by spending more and more time jamming with my friends in Eclipse. As the August day of departure got closer, I felt more like a visitor to the U.S. from a parallel universe. I was leaving. But I didn’t really know where I was going. The America I knew was rock concerts at the Nassau Coliseum, Yankees games, and a close-knit group of teenage friends that made up a living mosaic of my adopted country. There was my Irish-American buddy Brian, my Jewish friends Paul Siegel and Michael Langer, and Frank Bianco, the New York Italian kid I perfected my ping-pong game with. And then there was me, a brown-skinned, Pakistani-American Muslim named not Brian or John or Shawn, but Salman. We were one big circle of light brought together by music, sports, and shared experiences. None of us cared about the made-up divides of color, culture, or religion. A month before I was to return to Pakistan, five of us had sped down the Palisades Parkway in Cindy Shaw’s father’s red and white Oldsmobile, singing at the top of our lungs along with David Lee Roth to “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.” In that car, with those friends on my way to my final Van Halen concert, I shot footage for a mental movie of what I thought were the last days of my American life. There was so much to leave behind. All around me, in 1981 in New York, kids had dyed their hair red or purple and identified themselves as punks after the movement spearheaded by Britain’s notorious Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. That year everyone wore dark sunglasses indoors. The musical-film Fame dazzled audiences. Rocky Horror Picture Show fans were doing the time warp. American hostages were finally brought home after 444 days of captivity in Iran, Pakistan’s western neighbor. That spring, President Reagan had been shot in an assassination attempt in Washington. Bruce Springsteen sang about a hungry heart. Girls wore boots in the sun and high, open-toe Candies in the rain. And then one day in August I was gone, sitting sullenly in the seat of a PIA 747 and jetting with sickening speed away from the New York skyline. I could see the cars zig-zagging on the highways, the tall buildings of Manhattan trying to kiss the sky, and the golden glint of the flame in the hand of the Statue of Liberty. Soon we left New York far behind and climbed higher over the Atlantic Ocean. I was full of resentment, frustration, and anger. But as I fell into dreamland, my journey—from East to West and back again—was really just getting started. I couldn’t pay attention in anatomy class that November day. I kept sneaking desperate glances at the clock to see when the session would end. Meanwhile, I threw knowing looks at my co-conspirator of the day—Munir, known to everyone as “Clint” due to his obsession with Dirty Harry. Munir was a quiet, bohemian guy whom I had quickly befriended when I learned that like me, he listened to bootleg tapes of Hendrix, the Beatles, and Zeppelin. He also happened to own the only set of drums I could find anywhere in Lahore—making Munir my only candidate for musical backup that night. “Clint” rolled his eyes as the assistant professor droned on about the heart’s inferior and superior vena cavas, sinoatrial valves, and bundle of His. We weren’t slackers, but that day we were ready to get as far away from campus as we could. In fact, we couldn’t get very far. In the Pakistan of the day, there wasn’t much to do but study. In 1982, democracy was dead and a dictator, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, was running the show. A war was raging in neighboring Afghanistan, and Pakistan, a U.S. ally, was being transformed into a virtual arms bazaar, with Kalashnikovs as common a sight as a squirt gun at a kid’s birthday party. To me it seemed as if the body and soul of Pakistan had been snatched by aliens in Pakistani disguise. I still loved Pakistan for all the happy memories I had of gr...
