Breaking Down Barriers

By Sarah Higley, "Sufi Rock Band Junoon’s Lead Singer Salman Ahmed Comes to Pomona" - The Student Life News - Claremont, CA, USA
Volume 119, Number 13 /Friday, February 29, 2008

Musician, medical doctor, goodwill ambassador, and Pakistan’s first rock star Salman Ahmed performed for an audience of more than 300 people Sunday night at the Smith Campus Center, promoting his lifelong dedication to the people of South Asia.

A noted humanitarian, Ahmed screened a short documentary about his work with his band Junoon, and later performed a set with maestro tabla player Pandit Sameer Chatterjee.

Ahmed is both the lead guitarist and founder of Junoon, one of South Asia’s most popular rock bands. He specializes in Sufi rock, his creation, which blends conventional rock and traditional

Sufi music and imagery.
While attending middle and high school in New York, Ahmed found inspiration in the music of the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. He later incorporated the ideas of Sufi poets, who he said celebrate “the one-ness of humanity, finding God through self-knowledge.”

Ahmed has dedicated much of his life to breaking down barriers, between India and Pakistan and between East and West. He jokingly breaks the barrier between the band and its fans as well.

“You can get up here and dance, and do whatever you want and enjoy yourselves today,” he said to students at his talk on Sunday. “The aim is to destroy the wall between you and me.”

Taking him up on his offer, fans of all ages danced on and around the stage by the end of the night.

“He wanted people to be around him,” said Afshin Alaf Khan ’11, a fan of Junoon since childhood. “He was very down to earth, and very patient, and I like that.”

Ahmed also participated in a restrained question-and-answer session and a second showing of his documentary at Oldenborg on Monday. He fielded questions relating to his musical inspiration, his views on Pakistani politics, and how to breaking cultural divides.
He spent some time decrying the lack of understanding between the people of different countries, citing political maneuvering as a main obstacle.

“Politics demonizes, culture humanizes,” he said. “If you want to find out about the people, look at their culture, look at their music, look at their poetry, their art, and you’ll find out that people pretty much everywhere in the world are the same.”

Ahmed’s main wish for Pakistan was for the politically torn state to become a place where culture flourishes once again, “so that all these potential undiscovered artists can finally find a place to express.”

(...)

Ahmed will be performing at UCLA on Saturday, March 8 and in various cities across the United States as part of his ‘Mystical Journey’ concert tour.
[Picture from: http://www.junoon.com/].