Salman Ahmad - Rock and Roll Jihad

 

There's an old saying in Pakistan which goes like, “That whisper in your heart has strength. It may not have wings, but it has the power to fly.” I first discovered that whisper around the age of six. I was born in Lahore, Pakistan. There was a family wedding. And at family weddings, there always used to be music. So, at this family wedding, a qawwali concert was taking place. Qawwali music is about unity, sacred union, whirling, trance-like rhythms, hand claps and joy. So, as a six-year-old, what I remember is my aunts and uncles dancing in a state of bliss, fanaa, mystical ecstasy. Some of them were throwing money at the musicians. I thought that's a pretty good job. [audience laughter] 

 

But also, I knew as a six-year-old in Pakistan that my career, or what my mother always said was, "Son, you can either become a doctor or you can become a doctor." [audience laughter] That was not for me. Cut to, when I'm 11, my father, who worked in the airlines, he came home and he said, "I've got a job offer in Manhattan. And so, we're moving 8,000 miles away to New York." And so, my younger sister and I-- I'm going to date myself now. We said, "Ronald McDonald, 13 channels of television, let's go." [audience laughter] 

 

So, we arrive. And the first two years in my middle school, I'm the only overweight brown Muslim kid. I have no friends, except for TV and radio. Until one day when I was 13 at my bus stop, this kid who went to school with me, Danny Spitz. He went on to play guitar in the heavy metal band Anthrax. He looked at me and said, "Sal, Sal, Sal, [audience chuckle] dude, you got to get cool." I looked at him and said, "Cool? [audience laughter] What is cool?" So, Danny took this red ticket out of his back pocket and he said, "Dude, if you buy this ticket from me, your life will change." 

 

Now, as he was hustling me that ticket, I'm thinking about my conservative Muslim mother who thinks going out anywhere is you're going to lose your culture, you're going to lose your religion. Yet the whisper in my heart was whispering loudly. And I said, "What is that ticket?" He said, "This is a ticket to see a rock and roll concert at Madison Square Garden. It's for Monday night. It's the only ticket I have." So, I said, "Danny, I'll buy the ticket." 

 

I took the ticket from him, I went home and I said to my mother, "This is field trip. [audience laughter] Entire school is going to Madison Square Garden [audience laughter] on this Monday night and you have to drive me." [audience laughter] So, my mother looks at me with these silent, skeptical eyes, she says, "Well, you'll have to dress up." And so, on that Monday, I'm wearing a yellow floral shirt, red and white striped pants, [audience laughter] a black belt and shiny black shoes. That's how Pakistani kids went out to birthday parties.

 

And so, we drive down from Rockland County into Manhattan. I said to my mother, "Three blocks away from Madison Square, just drop me here and pick me up later." As I walk on the sidewalk, now I'm going to date myself, there are thousands and thousands of teenagers with torn jeans, peace signs and expressions which say dazed and confused. [audience chuckle] So, you know where I'm going with this. On the Jumbotron, it says tonight, live in concert, Led Zeppelin. [audience cheers] 

 

Now, for me, Led Zeppelin could have been the Bay City Rollers. [audience laughter] So, I walk in. After hanging around in this smoky atmosphere with thousands, thousands of teenagers who had these blissful expressions just like at the qawwali concert when I was six years old, [audience laughter] the lights go down and these four musicians come up on stage.

 

One of them, the guitar player Jimmy Page, has this two-headed guitar. He's got dragons painted on his pants, and these laser lights are hitting him. He picks up the guitar and he goes. [imitates guitar music] All of a sudden, this almighty roar goes up saying "Kashmir." [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

I'm thinking, Kashmir? It's not safe there. Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir. [audience laughter] Yet in this tornado of guitar, bass, drums and vocals and a whole lot of love, my heart whispered very strongly again. At the end of that show, I said I want to do that for the rest of my life. [audience laughter] And so, I go home and I said to my mother, "Can I buy a guitar?" And she said, "Well, if you can save up enough money, you can buy a guitar."

 

So, I worked as a busboy at Blauville Coach Diner, saved up $237 to buy a copy of a Les Paul. Once I had that instrument, it was my soulmate, I just never came out of my room, locked myself in and listened to the Beatles, listened to Zeppelin, Hendrix, Clapton, Beck. I learned all the blues. And pretty soon, my parents got very scared. [audience laughter] 

 

One day, a surgeon uncle from Pakistan showed up and they said, "Can you go into his room and extract him?" [audience laughter] So, my uncle Anwar comes into the room and I'm wailing away and he says, "Beta, son, what are you going to do with your life?" So, behind him was this poster of Jimi Hendrix. I said, "I want to be like that guy there." So, he goes back to my parents and he says, "Look, if he stays in the States, he's going to become a musician. Send him back to Pakistan now. There is no rock music there."

 

When I graduated from high school, my family moves back. I'm back in my city of Lahore. But now, what's changed is there used to be democracy, but while I was away, a general, a military dictator, came into power. It was like having a Pakistani Oliver Cromwell. No celebration, no enjoyment, no gender mixing, no music, especially not guitar music. It was like the kingdom of darkness. I was in the first year of medical school in Lahore and I was losing my mind. I couldn't go to any concerts. So, one day, I thought of this crazy idea. There used to be this Gong Show on TV. I thought, you know what? I'm going to put together a secret talent show.

 

So, anybody in my class who can tell a joke, who can juggle, who can do anything or play guitar can be on stage and have their 10 minutes of fame. So, I schemed this whole thing up. It was off campus, 60 of us. And at this show, I'm waiting for the juggler to end, so I can get up on stage. I had practiced Eddie Van Halen's Eruption. I had one accompanying musician with me, a drummer who had a cymbal, a snare drum and a bass drum. And I said to him, "Each time I look at you, just hit the drums really hard." [audience laughter] So, I go into my solo and I close my eyes. I'm going to this fast finger tapping this part of the solo. And all of a sudden, I hear these screams.

 

And in my mind's eye, 18 years old, I'm thinking, I am the rock star. [audience laughter] This is a little bit like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. And the screams get louder and louder. I'm just enjoying myself. Until I realize that these screams are not of adulation and admiration, these screams are of apprehension and danger. So, I open up my eyes, and lo and behold, I see the Taliban. And religious extremists who had heard that there was a den of sin and vulgarity, girls and guys mixing with each other, so they came there with burqas. They threw the burqas on the girls.

 

And one of them, this guy with a crazed look in his eye, came up to me, and before I could process what he was trying to do, he grabbed my guitar, my Les Paul, and he smashed it on the marble floor. My rock and roll dream there-- And in a weird way, I also thought this is complete humiliation, because rock musicians destroy their own guitars. [audience laughter] Yet he goes to me, "If you ever play that thing again, I will shoot you down." They had guns. This was also neighboring Afghanistan, the Soviets were there. So, there was a drug culture, heroin and a Kalashnikov culture, which had filtered into Pakistan. So, it was this really scary time. 

 

A lot of students were killed for no reason. The stark choices I had was either to cave into the fear, give up my passion, or follow my heart. I chose to follow my heart. Now, ever since terrorists have hijacked Islam, they've twisted so many things. For example, suicide is haram. It's prohibited, but there's suicide bombing. Killing innocents is prohibited, but they kill innocents. And the word, the J word, the dreaded J word, jihad, which actually means to strive to lift yourself up and to lift society up has been now conjured up these images of violence and extremism. 

 

So, I decided while I was in medical school, I was going to wage a rock and roll jihad, a struggle to play my music. I started several clandestine underground bands in Lahore, two of which, Vital Signs, became the biggest band in Pakistan, and the one I founded, Junoon, which means uncompromising passion bordering on madness. In other words, crazy. That band became the biggest rock band of South Asia. I found myself– [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Thank you. In 2008, I took Junoon to play the first ever rock concert in Kashmir. Despite death threats from militants, I played at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and I'm here to tell you the story at The Moth. Thank you.