Heavy Metal Islam (30 page)

Founding a Scene

Most of the students with whom I met were not Junoon fans (at least not openly), but it was clear that many appreciated the risks the band took to force a national discussion on some of the country’s most distressing social and political problems. It wasn’t Junoon that started the rock scene in Pakistan, however. The seminal band was Vital Signs, founded in 1987 by Junaid Jamshed, who was joined by Salman Ahmed on guitars for a few years before Salman left to form Junoon.

Until the creation of Vital Signs, and for years after, rock music traveled across Pakistan the old-fashioned way, through sharing old rock magazines and pirated tapes, and through borrowing music from anyone who already had it. What was missing until Vital Signs arrived was a certifiable hit song. That was provided by the band’s patriotic smash hit “Dil Dil Pakistan,” which in 2003 was voted the third most popular song of all time on BBC World.

What made Vital Signs and Junoon so important to Pakistani culture was the nerve they struck among young people. Vital Signs’s videos depicted young men with relatively long hair having fun, driving around, smoking cigarettes, and hanging out with girls in a nonthreatening and not overly sexualized way. A few years later Junoon would offer an even more direct, positive, and uplifting alternative to the dour, oppressive, and violent ultraconservative, Saudi-sponsored vision of Islam.

From Junoon’s Sufi perspective, religion must function as music does in linking people together rather than tearing them apart. Of course, such a view of religion is not going to be received well by an authoritarian system that for decades has used religion to divide and rule. And so Junoon was accused by officials of “belittling the concept of the ideology of Pakistan” and disagreeing with “national opinion” just for suggesting that their Pakistani and Indian fans were more alike than their national differences would suggest.

When Salman started receiving death threats for daring to play a supposedly secular style of music, he decided to tackle the issue head-on with a documentary film,
The Rock Star and the Mullahs,
that trailed him as he traveled through Pakistan speaking with religious leaders. “Unless you confront these critics directly, there’s always going to be a sense that music is
haram
[forbidden].” With little regard for his personal safety, Salman actually brought a guitar into conservative madrasas and mosques and sang verses from the Qur’an.

What convinced Salman that his position on music was right was not the response the viewers see on camera, which depicted the Taliban telling him he’d burn in hell for putting the Qur’an to music, regardless of the purity of his intentions. Rather it was what happened once the cameras were off: teachers and students asked him for his autograph and admitted that they knew the words to all his songs. One mullah even started to sing beautifully. “He was clearly afraid of losing his gig! The mullahs are just hungry for an audience. They want people to listen to them, not to the musicians. But music can bridge the gap between religion and the people; that’s why it’s the soundtrack to peace.”

The Final Frontier Is Inside Us

Driving into Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), there is a sign on the road that welcomes you to “the land of hospitality.” This is not what I expected to find on my way to Peshawar, gateway to the region of the country controlled by the Taliban and al-Qa’eda, where Osama bin Laden is said to be hiding.

In the United States, and even in Pakistan, the NWFP is known almost exclusively as a haven for terrorists, ultra-traditionalists, and drug and arms smugglers. No doubt it has many of those, but it also has the ancient valley of Swat, known as the “Switzerland of Pakistan” (at least until the Taliban overran it in the fall of 2007) because of its famous ski resorts. The region is also home to some of the largest and most beautiful Buddhist statues in the world. And until Saudi-style extremism invaded the region—courtesy of the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, which during the Afghan war turned the NWFP into the staging area for
mujahidin
activities in neighboring Afghanistan—the region was popular with adventurous Americans, from Texan gun enthusiasts, who flocked to the famed gunsmiths of Peshawar, to Robert De Niro, whose visit to the Khyber Pass is memorialized by photos of him eating in local restaurants.

When you arrive in Peshawar, road signs point to the “Imaginarium Institute for American Studies.” Yet the U.S. Consulate’s American Club changed its name for security reasons. The gates leading into the tribal areas warn,
NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED,
yet Peshawar is awash in foreign money and people, its “smugglers’ bazaar” awash equally in weapons, drugs, pornography, and cheap Chinese electronics. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, USAID, European NGOs, the Taliban—all have staked a claim to a city that has been at the crossroads of empire since Alexander the Great crossed the nearby Khyber Pass.

So has Sajid & Zeeshan, Pakistan’s best rock duo, whose improbably beautiful album
One Light Year at Snail Speed,
filled with songs driven by acoustic guitars and keyboards, was recorded almost entirely in the home studio of the band’s keyboard player, Zeeshan Parwez, using old synthesizers and guitars bought for a song at the smugglers’ bazaar. The duo’s music, which features lush vocals that flow over techno and house beats, acoustic guitars, and vintage synth sounds, symbolizes the contradictions of living on the frontier of Pakistani society and identity.

The day I arrived, an article about the band appeared on the front page of
Dawn,
the country’s most important English-language newspaper: “Peshawar is not a place known for being very music-savvy, and the idea of a band coming from there was surprising for many music enthusiasts.” In fact, as the duo explained to me, Peshawarians are called “walnuts” by other Pakistanis because they are supposedly “hardheaded or stupid. When we tour in other Pakistani cities, people actually ask us if we live in mud huts.”

Such ignorance stems from the fact that so few Pakistanis from outside the region go to Peshawar these days, since the city and the surrounding tribal areas have become identified with the Taliban and reckless violence. Yet the rock scene there is almost two decades old. Sajid Ghafoor, the duo’s singer and guitarist, was one of its founders, and from the start has been determined to show Pakistanis that Peshawar has a vibrant, creative cultural scene at the forefront of Pakistani society.

Sajid looks like someone straight out of the 1970s. His straight, longish dirty brown hair, pleasant face, and thin build remind me of Jackson Browne, a perception that was reinforced by his singing style, which is heavily influenced by 1970s California acoustic rock, Neil Young, and, more recently, Counting Crows. When he’s not playing guitar, Sajid is an international and environmental law professor at Peshawar University, with degrees from Hull University in the UK and the University of Oslo. Of the two professions, however, his haunting voice and catchy songs are what define him.

If Sajid writes most of the band’s songs, Zeeshan, who’s shorter, heavier, and a bit less stylish, is the duo’s foundation. An MBA and a strong talent for computer technology allowed him to build a professional music and video production studio out of the musical detritus available at the smugglers’ bazaar. When he’s not recording albums, Zeeshan is shooting videos for many of Pakistan’s biggest bands, and hosting the MTV Pakistan show
On the Fringe.

Neither Sajid nor Zeeshan would leave Peshawar, which they regard as a refuge from the crass materialism and lack of social solidarity that pervade the country. As Sajid explained, “Peshawar might be light-years behind other cities, yet we don’t deviate from our traditions and culture. People still look out for each other. Even if we party, we respect tradition.”

Not that either of them have the chance to party that much. It’s nearly impossible to perform in Peshawar since the last election put the ultraconservative Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal Party in power, and the government turned control of the NWFP over to local leaders in the vain hope that in return they’d curtail Taliban violence. “The only places one can play since then is at nearby army camps, or at the American Consulate’s American Club,” which in good colonial fashion doesn’t allow Pakistanis inside unless they’re working there. Alternatively, there are private parties, of a kind more discreet than the one I attended in Islamabad, in the burgeoning elite neighborhoods and suburbs of Peshawar. But it’s hard to make a career of such infrequent gigs.

Sajid has deep roots in Peshawar (over lunch at Peshawar’s best restaurant, Shiraz, Zeeshan bragged that his partner is a descendant of Genghis Khan, as Sajid smiled sheepishly), but his musical tastes range far more broadly than the traditional music of the NWFP. “One record shop here got the best music before shops in the big cities. And the coolest was metal. We grew up on metal. Megadeth, Metallica, Rush, Rage Against the Machine, and of course Floyd and Zeppelin; the sound just related to our feelings of aggression living in a dictatorship, and helped us get out the anger in a healthy way.”

“There used to be so much culture here, especially music,” Zeeshan lamented. “Junoon used to play here. We could play for crowds of thousands. But once Musharraf handed over control of the NWFP to the religious parties, that all changed.” Zeeshan explained this as we headed toward the tribal areas. Neither of them was prepared to make a trip of it, and the armed guards standing next to the sign reading
NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED
led me to agree, although I was well aware that if I entered under the “protection” of someone from the region, I would be all but untouchable by local custom.

But Sajid and Zeeshan also know that this tradition is under threat, and they are despondent about the growing extremism of Pakistani Islam and its intersection with government corruption—a combination that led the duo to record its first Pashto-language song, “Lambay,” soon after my visit, for which we collaborated on a heavy-metal version of the song for the compilation album being released by EMI simultaneously with the publication of this book. Echoing the description by Moe Hamzeh of Lebanon’s increasing religious-secular divide, Sajid said, “When I was in school I had religious friends. We respected them and they respected us. My brother is one of the most famous guitarists and producers in Pakistan, but prays five times a day. What you have to understand is that the Islamists who are against music are against it not because a fatwa has told them it’s wrong, but because music opens minds and allows people to express themselves. They use Islam to stop others for political or economic reasons. But that’s not Islam.”

With a corrupt and authoritarian regime on one side, and the Taliban literally a few villages away, there’s not that much space for Sajid and Zeeshan to stake out the kind of directly political positions that made Junoon famous a decade ago. Instead, they use their work to educate people and get them to question authority. Perhaps the most political song Sajid & Zeeshan has written is “Free Style Dive.” Zeeshan’s animated video of the song depicts a husband, whose wife has left him because he worked in a fast-food restaurant, fantasizing about robbing a bank. The clip shows him shooting several people before being arrested, at which point it becomes clear that he’s imagining the scene, because it rewinds to his putting on his uniform and heading out to another dreary day. After clocking out at the end of his shift, the man spends the evening sitting on a bench at Khyber Park, staring despondently at the Pass. We drove by the park soon after I had watched the video. It has a spectacular view. But a bit outside the “frame” (of the scene in front of us, and of its video representation) are the luxury villas of the city’s wealthy smugglers and the makeshift tents of Afghan refugees who’ve settled outside their gates. Between smugglers, refugees, Taliban, and corrupt government officials, the seeming futility of trying to transform Pakistan was hard to let go of.

Finding Pakistan’s Most Globalized Music in Its Imperial Capital

Soon after I first met Zeeshan, he told me about an incredible guitarist he’d worked with in Lahore, Mekaal Hassan, who played heavy metal and progressive jazz with equal fire and precision. Before I could even say that I’d like to meet him, Zeeshan dialed his number on his mobile and handed me the phone. Luckily, Mekaal was in town for the next few days, so we agreed to get together once I arrived in Lahore. “Enjoy the drive,” he exclaimed before hanging up. I wasn’t sure whether that was meant truthfully or as a veiled warning, but Zeeshan explained that the first part of the drive passes through some of the most beautiful valleys in the country, which turned out to be true, especially the Kalar Kahar valley.

Lahore, however, is one of the more intense cities I’ve ever been to, a teeming city of nearly 10 million, and the cultural heart of Pakistan. The streets overflow with people, cars, and rickshaws and donkeys and the occasional truck that has been whittled away to little more than an engine, a frame, and four tires, yet still manages to navigate through the unmanageable traffic.