Where Did Salman Ahmed Learn Guitar

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Pakistani singer-guitarist Salman Ahmad of Junoon fame who in the 90s was labeled a traitor for advocating cultural fusion betwixt Pakistan and India and not nuclear fusion says music beyond generations and spinous wire borders has nifty power and no barriers tin stop it.

With a guitar slung over his shoulder, a microphone clutched in his fist and his very rockstar-ish ponytail, Ahmed is dubbed equally the Bono of Pakistan and his relentless chase for peace and harmony through music has become an act of defiance against the junta.

Junoonis (equally the Sufi rock ring diehard fans are known) continue to seek inspiration from the ring's songs. "In February, at our recent concert in Delhi for UNESCO, an Indian mother brought her girl, a vibrant teenager, to the show. She named her girl 'Sayonee' after ane of our songs 'because I OD'd on Junoon'south music during the 90s,' she exclaimed.

"When I met the Junooni teenager and her mom afterwards the concert, Sayonee told me that she is now learning to play the guitar only like me. That is the ability of music across generations and spinous wire borders. No barriers can end it," says the vocaliser in an interview published in the latest issue of Equator Line, which is dedicated to writings from Islamic republic of pakistan.

"In Baronial we are celebrating 25 years of Junoon. Over the last quarter century, Junoon's music has been inextricably entwined with Pakistani culture, spirituality and politics." Ahmed says he always believed that there should be cultural fusion between Pakistan and India, not nuclear fusion.

"I was labeled a traitor for saying this dorsum in 1998 only now I'g chosen a peace ambassador by the aforementioned Nawaz Sharif government which banned Junoon during the '90s. Junoon is also the first and but Pakistani rock ring to have performed in Kashmir (May, 2008) at the edge of Dal Lake for thousands of Kashmiri college students and the Southward Asian leadership," he says.

Ahmed dubs this concert as one of his nearly memorable life experiences because it 'revealed a glimpse of peace and harmony in a subcontinent divided past hate and violence.' Terming youths as future of Southern asia, he says peace is the only mode frontward for the two nuclear-armed neighbours. "Social justice, tolerance and peace have been the common thread in all my artistic work."

Asked whether music can substitute intolerance with pluralism, he says, "Pakistani music, poetry, literature have acted as a span between generations, between tradition and modernity, beyond cultures and nations. From Madam Nur Jehan to Abida Parveen, from Mehdi Hasan to Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, from Nazia Hasan to Junoon to the present generation, artists accept courageously connected to provide a mosaic of cultural spaces which illuminate the rich tapestry of artistic expression inside Pakistan."

"In that location is a fierce individualism and a burn down for freedom that burns within the hearts of Pakistani artists and information technology will never exist extinguished by detest and division. Extremism in all forms cannot muzzle the voices of Pakistani artists. Culture humanises what politics demonises," he says.

On his musical journeying, he says, "I grew up in the Us; apart from classical rock and popular I studied Western music theory, arrangement and orchestration, and played in various rock bands before returning to Pakistan to train every bit a doctor in my abode boondocks, Lahore, at King Edward Medical College.

"I was a restless child who loved the rich multifariousness of the subcontinent's musical genres - qawwali, folk, classical, ghazal and as well, the best of Bollywood. All of these musical influences take naturally seeped into my compositions and Junoon'south sound is a colourful kaleidoscope of these influences.

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