Junaid Jamshed - Pakistani Pop Icon

By Ambareen Imran

Junaid Jamshed is a Pakistani pop icon who makes cheerful, infectious music. Along with Rohail and Shahzad. Junaid has reached out to Pakistanis across the board, and touched them with his Vital Signs, and their message of hope for peace, progress, and prosperity.

Born on September 3, 1964 at the Pakistan Air Force Base Masroor, Junaid comes from a privileged background, which has imbued him with a strong sense of patriotism and the need for enterprise. A mechanical engineer from the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, Junaid demonstrated his entrepreneurial spirit by abandoning a tried and tested profession in preference to sailing in uncharted, often icy waters as a professional musician. Ten years down the road he has absolutely no regrets. Junaid is happily married with three children, and possesses all the trappings of a successful professional.

Recently Junaid seemed to have shifted from the world of lights to spiritualism. Has Junaid found any contradiction, any conflict between his chosen profession and the tenets of Islam?
“There is still confusion in my mind on that score,” says Junaid. “Nobody has come right out and stopped me. When I was in Raiwind I met a learned elder who asked me what I did for a living. I kept quiet. My friend told him that I was a well-known musician. He smiled at me, and said that a Muslim’s distinction is that he rises to the top of whatever profession he chooses. The tension and apprehension that had been developing inside me disappeared after hearing that, and I really felt good.” He admits that when he returned from Raiwind there was a serious debate within him as to whether he should give up music, or continue with it. “Then Imran Bhai (former cricket captain turned crusader) called me: “Don’t alienate your friends and fans by making too radical a move which they can’t relate to”, he said. He told me about how his good intentions and patriotic feelings towards the shalwar-kameez had brought on wholly unreasonable censor. He said if I went public with my new convictions I might actually impact the public negatively.”

Junaid has thought long and hard about all the contradictions in his life, and he admits that he is a long way from reconciling them to his satisfaction. Has he had problems handling his success?“Most definitely,” says he. “The first two years of my marriage were pretty tense, to put it mildly. Success brings with it conflict, and conflict invariably gives rise to conflict resolutions. I managed to ride out the early storms in my career. Not to say that it has been a smooth ride since.”

Does his life now have a new objective, a new direction?“In very general terms, yes. It revolves around how I can favorably impact my immediate environment and society. That, in a nutshell, I feel is the essence of Islam.” His group leader would emphasize a few points repeatedly, he says. One of them was that if you see something bad about a person, immediately look to your own shortcomings. So, before criticizing somebody else set your own self-right. The second point was that if somebody offends you in any way, forgive him immediately. The third point was to lend a helping hand to those in need. “Raiwind was a priceless exercise in self-empowerment. You try and better your own self. You don’t try and change the world overnight.”

Does this new awareness alienate him from society, considering that society in general is in such bad shape? Junaid appears to have his priorities right. “All I know is that on the Day of Judgement I will be answerable for my own actions. Allah will not forgive me for doing wrong just because everyone else was doing wrong.” As a role model does he not feel that it should be part of his agenda to change the world for the better? “First I must change myself before I can even begin to think in terms of changing the world. Having said that, I am very aware of my responsibilities as a role model. In my ten years of public life with the band, my colleagues and I have not done anything to disarray the minds of our fans. That is also true of the entire pop industry in Pakistan. Nothing about our personal conduct has had a detrimental effect upon the minds of the kids.”

And how does he view the Prime Minister’s assault upon the very roots of his profession?“When I returned from Raiwind I was told that the Prime Minister had said that he would personally like to cut the hair of the person who had sung Dil dil Pakistan. At that time, as it is, I had short-cropped hair! What’s wrong with long hair anyway? Long hair is sunnat. I was also told that I had endorsed the PM’s ban on pop music! I was simply stunned. I had said no such thing.”
Junaid is saddened by the thought that his many years of loyalty and patriotism should result in this. Sometimes the entire exercise appears pointless and futile to him. “It appears to be our fate to sing patriotic songs and pump up the public’s emotions. It appears to be the public’s fate to listen to our patriotic songs and continue to make sacrifices. And it appears to be our leaders’ job to rob and loot the public while it is seized with patriotic fervor. In spite of this realization and cynicism I have continued making patriotic songs because I feel very strongly about this country.” It surprises him that the PM could have said something like this. In fact he does not believe that Mian Sahib could have said something like this. It is just a warped trial balloon attributed to him. But the PM has not denied it either. “He has not denied it because there is nobody, who has challenged what he has said,” says Junaid, convinced that the PM’s viewpoint has been misrepresented.

And what about the PM’s condemnation of the jeans and the jackets in our culture, even though denim originated as a durable, practical working classes dress?“Those who wear jeans and jackets, and appear to ape the West, comprise a fraction of the nation’s population. I am sure that they would go along with the PM if he appealed to their intelligence, and presented worthyshalwar-kameez role models, instead of making arbitrary pronouncements.”

Returning to his brush with spirituality, when and how did he get started in this direction? “This process, if you would like to call it that, began in October 1995. Before then my experience with religion was more or less restricted to the Friday prayer congregation in the mosque.” There Junaid would listen to talk about the Hereafter, and how everyone would leave all their material possessions behind. “I would like to emphasize here that what I am doing is narrating a personal experience,” says Junaid with a fair bit of concern. “It is not my intention to preach and perhaps offend some people. Religion is a very personal matter.”

Junaid has a friend who is a very pious, religious man. He was his schoolmate, and is just like him for all practical purposes, even his name is Junaid. His friend never insisted that he conforms to his viewpoint, but he got him thinking and started him off on a tentative voyage of discovery.
Initially he had problems since people used to recognize him in such gathering in spite of his glasses and beard. Finally he began covering his face, but that only made matters worse since he would be the only one in the congregation with a covered face. He began staying inside the mosque for lengthy spells. The village kids would find out sooner than later, and swarm the mosque, much to his group leader’s irritation. “In those forty days I learnt a great deal. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my entire life’s experiences do not add up to a fraction of what I learnt in those forty days.”

And what of Junaid’s future plans? Making material for Channel V (minus the half-naked dancing girls, naturally), and a determined assault on foreign markets is high on the agenda, along with doing a new album. “It has been almost three years since our last album, and we would like to go with a foreign label this time so as to increase our outreach in the global village. We have a new contract with Pepsi, and we are looking to doing more ‘live’ concerts, both at home and overseas.”

The guitar, the drums, the saxophone, and all the other instruments related to the pop music industry have assumed the proportions of modern day weapons of peacetime warfare in the global village. More power to Junaid and the Vital Signs in their high tech, sophisticated crusade.