Heavy Metal Islam (32 page)

However important the message of “Yeh zindagi hai” and other consciousness-raising Pakistani rock songs, the reality is that at least half the target audience for the song—the militant students willing to use violence to enforce their view of Islam on their classmates—is unlikely ever to hear it. And unless, as Salman Ahmed has done, you’re willing to take your guitar and start traveling to madrasas around Karachi and Lahore, it’s hard to imagine how Karavan’s brand of progressive metal and lyrics will get that audience to change their intolerant position toward the rest of Pakistani society. This doesn’t diminish the power of the group’s music, but it does highlight the fact that even the most powerful music has a hard time moving beyond the larger social networks and relations in which it is embedded.

If Karavan is the gold standard of Pakistani hard rock, two younger Karachi-based bands are producing some of the most innovative and popular hard rock today: Aaroh and Mizraab. The name Aaroh refers to the ascending part of a scale in classical Indian/Pakistani classical music, and in fact lead singer Farooq Ahmed trained extensively in that style as a child. He used that knowledge for the vocal and melodic foundation of Aaroh.

Aaroh first hit the big time when it won the Pepsi-sponsored Battle of the Bands in 2002 (they came in first out of a field of 171 bands). The Pepsi Battle has in fact launched many of the top rock bands in Pakistan of the last decade, and its importance in the Pakistani music industry reflects the disproportionate importance of major corporations—both foreign and domestic—in Pakistani popular culture. The battle for signing the best young bands has been likened to a “battle of the brands” between giants like Pepsi, who signed up Vital Signs soon after their hit “Dil Dil Pakistan,” and Coke, which became Junoon’s main corporate sponsor after the band hit it big in 1996. Both cola companies had the same goal of building brand awareness among their young customers through music, following the practice perfected in the United States over the last two generations of using the allure and mystique of music to sell otherwise uninteresting products.

Because Pakistani record companies don’t as a rule nurture new music, such sponsorship deals help support artists on tour, pay for video production, and ensure that videos are played regularly on the major music channels (in fact, most good videos are sponsored by brands, not record labels). Even successful bands need good sponsors because CD piracy greatly limits their income from record sales. “The money from sponsorships is crucial to our survival,” one musician told me. The problem, at least according to respected rock journalist Nadeem Paracha, is that the power of Pepsi and other Pakistani companies to shape popular music is starting to resemble Rotana’s, with equally negative results. In the end, he argues, “There is hardly any difference, really, between a cynical corporate exec and a foaming fat mullah.” Of course, corporate execs don’t issue fatwas or declare jihad, but neither do the vast majority of religious figures. From Farooq’s perspective, in Pakistan today both are part of the same system of corruption, intolerance, and oppression. Both stifle creativity, and both stop music from doing what it does best: challenge society’s conservative mores and push it forward toward more openness and tolerance.

Aaroh learned about the power of relying on corporate sponsors the hard way. Band members claim that Pepsi never came through with the money the band was awarded for winning the Battle of the Bands. This left Aaroh in legal and musical limbo until its contract expired, during which time several members of the band left in search of better prospects. Luckily the band’s two most important members, Farooq and bass player Khalid Khan, remained. Freed of the need to write specifically for Pepsi and its favored demographic, the reformed band began to produce its own music. Since that time, Aaroh has become one of the best songwriting hard-rock bands on the subcontinent, with powerful yet catchy riffs, funky drum and bass grooves, and vocally expansive melodies that give Aaroh a sound that few rock or metal bands can match, in or outside of Pakistan.

The members of Aaroh, like Karavan, enjoy being rock stars. You can see it in the way they walk around, and in the care they put into presenting themselves to the public, including the rock-star-style clothes they wear even when just going about town. But for sheer musicianship and drive, perhaps the most important guitarist in Karachi is Faraz Anwar, founder of the band Mizraab. “We don’t live in the fancy part of town,” Mizraab’s bass player, Rahail Siddiqui, said mockingly, when we first met at Amin’s Coffee Café. Faraz’s house was a half hour away, near the airport, in a decidedly working-class part of town.

Now in his thirties, Faraz looks like a teenager who doesn’t get out in the sun much. That’s because he spends most of his time in his small studio working on new material (like Prince—and Mekaal Hassan—Faraz plays all the instruments on his record, and acts as his own engineer and producer). “I basically taught myself how to play guitar,” he said. “Mostly through cassette tapes, and then videotapes of my favorite guitarists that I ordered out of guitar magazines.”

Those tapes, plus an eight-to-sixteen-hours per day practice regimen, have served Faraz well. He is known in musicians’ circles as one of the premier guitarists in the country. His first album,
An Abstract Point of View,
was released by Gnarly Geezer, the boutique record label of his hero, the British progressive jazz virtuoso Allan Holdsworth, who’s known to go out of his way to find the best young talent to expose to his quirky but devoted following. Faraz has done more than any other artist to bring progressive jazz-rock to Pakistan, wrapping it in Pakistani melodies and sheathing it in heavy-metal riffs and drums. The eclectic style has yielded several hits, the most popular among them being the song “Ujalon Main,” which features a catchy chorus and a jazz-rock solo that demonstrates his unique style, placing him in the virtuoso company of Mekaal Hassan and Assad Ahmed.

It’s not just Faraz’s fanatical technique and dedication that separate him from most other musicians in Pakistan’s rock and metal scene. He’s also deeply religious. “He prays five times a day,” Rahail explained (even many religious Muslims don’t pray the required five times per day). Faraz’s lack of rock-’n’-roll narcissism, the absence of themes involving sex in his music (unlike Aaroh’s videos, none of Mizraab’s feature beautiful women in sultry poses), and his religious and working-class roots, all offer Mizraab the chance to reach out to precisely the section of the Pakistani population—young, working-class, and religious, but not under the spell of militant ideologies—who are crucial to uniting the economic, social, and political factions that have divided Pakistan.

Junaid Jamshed, the founder of Vital Signs, is perhaps the biggest-selling artist in Pakistani history. But these days it’s not music that keeps his spirits high. Instead, it’s his faith. If Junoon was the Led Zeppelin of Pakistan, Junaid’s good looks, charismatic personality, and powerful voice made Vital Signs the country’s Beatles. But beneath the fabulous life of a mega-celebrity, something wasn’t right. As he recounts it, “It was ten years ago, around 1997, and I was at the peak of my career, almost an icon in my country. I had everything at my feet, but I was unhappy and discontented. Then I met an old school friend, Jhani, who had returned to his faith. He was a very successful businessman, yet he led a peaceful and uncomplicated life, with time for friends, family, and charity.

“Jhani never spoke to me about Islam or any ideology; he didn’t preach. But as I spent time with him I began to think that maybe this way of life could give me spiritual material for my albums—new directions—as far as music was concerned. Then I realized the music I had been doing up till then was often without substance. Everyone was doing it. People took from me, just as I had taken from Sting, Genesis, Deep Purple, or Madonna, grabbing elements from here and there, sugarcoating them, and putting the result in front of an audience as if it was Junaid. So I started sitting with him and going to the mosque. You know, all the things about gun-running and terrorism, that the West and even many in Pakistan relate to mosques and Islam, they had nothing to do with what I was seeing.”

Junaid’s discussion of his slow return to faith is quite interesting because it has opened him to other faiths in a way that most “born-again” Muslims—like their Christian or Jewish counterparts—have not been. “That’s true. For the first time I began to respect Hindus, Christians, Jews, and other religions because I realized that everyone is created by the Almighty. Everyone deserves respect because we’re all part of a global family. That helped me musically too, because with a spiritual background I radiated different emotions toward people. My motivation was no longer Jack-and-Jill songs, but rather the predicament of the whole world. I also learned that if we all want to live happily, we need to give more and expect little in return. The Qur’an is all about this, and other prophets also had the same message.”

Sadly for most Vital Signs fans, one of the things Junaid decided to stop giving was his music. In talking with many other of Pakistan’s most well-known artists who have known Junaid since the old days, it seems that like Cat Stevens, he left the music business because the rock-’n’-roll life was taking a dangerous toll on him. If true, it can help explain why, when he openly embraced his religion, he decided that all music besides religiously inspired vocals and drum is
haram.
Such a view follows the logic behind the prohibition against alcohol in Islam: the potential for abuse outweighs whatever good it can do. (Junaid’s renunciation is not unequivocal, however; he performed “Dil Dil Pakistan” to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its release. “I felt strange, but the song is like my child, it’s so beloved by people, so I had to do it.”)

Naturally, Salman Ahmed, who is an old friend from their days together in Vital Signs, has had many arguments with Junaid about his belief in the prohibition of music. “I know what Salman says, but the fact is that the Prophet forbade us to use other instruments besides the voice to create music. You can debate it, but that’s the way it is. And even with the music, all those great bands, the Doors, the Beatles, and the rest, all wanted to be against the establishment. But they didn’t have anywhere to take people once they led them away—there was never really an ‘other side’ to break
into,
rather than just out of. As for me, I still sing, but now I record
naat
s [traditional Pakistani songs in praise of the Prophet, with just vocals accompanied by a traditional drum], which are much purer. The last album I did just won the award for the best-selling album in Pakistan last year, and I’m doing
naat
s in English now, which are selling all over the world.”

At the same time, however, Junaid’s spiritual awakening hasn’t led him to turn away from or criticize his old friends in the rock and pop world. “Look, if I just tell society, ‘Don’t do this!’ they will be flabbergasted. ‘What the hell is this guy talking about?’ ‘Who is he, a musician, to tell me music is
haram
?’ etcetera. You must give them a better alternative. If I don’t have a better alternative, I shouldn’t tell them to stop or leave something.”

As we spoke, Junaid was getting ready to go out on one of his frequent
da’wa,
or conversation tours, around Pakistan, in which he travels around preaching his views of Islam to as many people as possible. These frequent trips have brought him close to the grassroots of Pakistani society. “Yes, there’s a lot of pain, suffering, and poverty, but I’ll tell you something, I’m optimistic. The other people you mention aren’t optimistic because they don’t have the answer. I do, and the answer is God. We just need to return to Him, and be willing to listen to others, and talk, and the rest will follow. And until then, Pakistan, the U.S., the whole world, will be disintegrating and disgruntled. It’s that simple.”

Junaid has managed to cross the cultural divide while keeping his respect for the world he left behind. But the dialogue he advocates is increasingly difficult to have in Pakistan, just as it is in Lebanon and most of the other countries of the MENA. Pakistanis from the country’s artistic, religious, and journalistic elites have all complained to me that the lack of communication, and the loss of young people to extremism that it encourages—extreme consumerism as much as extreme religion—“is killing the country.”