Pakistan’s Junoon mixes pop and patriotism

The Pakistan Rock Band JUNOON is playing at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and the scene looks like a mullah’s nightmare. The musicians are wearing traditional Jinnah-style jackets over jeans, and digging into acoustic guitars with the ferocity of Seattle’s finest. Soaked in sweat, lead singer Ali Azmat is gyrating his hips, tossing his long brown curls. Raspy-voiced and impassioned (Junoon means passion in Urdu), Azmat is Pakistan’s answer to the late Jim Morrison. When he poses the staple 70s rock-concert question "Are you ready to rock?" the crowed roars. The music may be hard-edged, but the lyrics are hard hard-core establishment. "Pakistan is mine," belts Azmat. "Pakistan is ours; Pakistan is yours."

Junoon’s unabashed patriotism has made it one of the few things the fractious Muslim nation of Pakistan can agree on. The band’s four albums have sold about 2 million units, which makes it Pakistan’s best-selling band. Mullahs have shyly asked to be photographed with the band members. Politicians have courted them. At their recent New York concert, the crowd of 1,200 contained balding men and bejeweled women. As well as youths in Junoon T-shirts. One set piece, an acoustic techno-blues rendition of the Pakistani national anthem, recalls Jimi Hendrix’s "Star-Spangled Banner" –minus the subversive overtones. In the Roo-sevelt Hotel ballroom, the mostly Pakistani audience rises respectfully to its feet.

Though MTV, the Internet and the Pakistani diaspora have given Junoon an international following, its roots remain in Pakistan. Band members grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Santana and Queen. Their sound is a strange braid of these 70s groups, grunge and qawalli, the music of Sufi Muslim mystics. Rurals villagers can pick out references to Punjabi folk lyrics, Pakistani politics and the Koran ; more westernized fans see other influences. "They sound just like PearlJam !" says one young fan, resplendent in an apricot shalwar-kameez. "Our parents worry that MTV is having satellites beaming into our souls," says guitarist Salman Ahmed. "They’re humongously paranoid about us losing our roots."

Junoon’s liner notes read like an unofficial history of Pakistan’s recent turmoil. After Karachi was racked by violence in 1995, Junoon wrote "Petition," an appeal for peace that opens with the first words of Koran. Last year, inspired by the cricketer Imran Khan’s bid for Pakistan’s presidency on an anti-corruption platform, Ahmed launched his own political-reform campaign. He wrote a song, "Accountability," about government corruption. The video included a scene of a horse dining at a luxury hotel –anone-too-veiled reference to the well-appointed stables that Benazir Bhutto’s husband , Ali Zardari, was rumored to keep for his polo ponies. The caretaker government banned "Accountability" from state television, on the grounds that it could destabilize the country before elections. But Junoon’s critique clearly had some impact. After Nawaz Sharif became prime minister and launched a program to trim Pakistan’s debt, one of his aides asked Ahmed whether the band might consider writing a song called "Get Rid of the Debt and Save the Country." Ahmed declined.

Fans, who call themselves Junoon’s , are zealous and far-flung. At a recent U.S gig, one devotee arrived with JUNOON scrawled across his shaven head. When the group played a girl’s school in the conservative city of Peshawar , near the afghan border, the audience threw off their veils to dance some revealing Junoon T shirts beneath notes posted on Junoon Web sites testify to a following with dual cultural roots: "I was born in Norway, but am a Pakistani girl …" Pakistanis overseas tend to be more shocked by their stage shows than audiences back home, because expatriate memories Pakistan are often out of date. "They’re completely fundos ," says singer Azmat. They're like , ‘you do this in Pakistan? Oh, my God."

The band’s appeal reaches beyond the westernized elites. In rough-and-tumble Baluchistan, an audience of tribal villagers applauded by shooting their rifles skyward. And Junoon has its fans among the mullahs. At one Karachi concert last year, band mambers arrived to there was no electricity . when Ahmed asked at a nearby Islamic seminary whether they could run a cable to their amps, the  mullah paused – then recognized the guitarist as the author of the spiritual hit "Saeen"(or "saint"). "He mantioned Allah in it – let’s give him a line," the mullah said. The only condition: that Junoon stop[ playing during the call to prayer. Pearl Jam, surely, wouldn’t do as much.

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