Junoon
Founded in 1990 by guitarist Salman Ahmad, Junoon became Pakistan's defining rock band by fusing distorted electric guitar with qawwali and Sufi poetry — a hybrid the press dubbed 'Sufi rock.' With vocalist Ali Azmat and American-born bassist Brian O'Connell, the trio set verses by Sufi poets such as Bulleh Shah and Allama Iqbal to stadium-sized riffs, breaking through with the 1997 anthem 'Sayonee' and selling millions of records across South Asia. Their marriage of Western hard rock and Eastern devotional music reshaped what Pakistani popular music could sound like for the generation that followed.
Junoon's Sufi rock was built by routing qawwali through a rock band, and Salman Ahmad has named the qawwali tradition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as a foundation of that fusion — the band set Sufi poetry to distorted guitar while keeping the trance-like, repeating devotional refrains at the center.
listen forCue Nusrat's 'Allah Hoo' and feel how the hypnotic, endlessly repeating refrain lifts the ensemble toward trance; then hear 'Sayonee' route that same rising, mantra-like Sufi refrain through a rock chorus.
Salman Ahmad has cited Led Zeppelin as a formative influence, and Junoon's heavy, riff-driven attack and Eastern-scale guitar figures echo Jimmy Page's fondness for modal, raga-tinged riffing built on a hard-rock rhythm section.
listen forPlay the churning, string-drenched Eastern modal riff of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir,' then hear Junoon's 'Jazba-e-Junoon' hammer a similarly martial, raga-tinged guitar figure into a full-band anthem.
Junoon's longer, atmospheric passages and extended, singing guitar solos draw on the psychedelic and progressive rock the band counts among its influences, Pink Floyd among them — spacious builds that give the guitar room to sustain and cry.
listen forSit with the slow, aching, sustained guitar lead of Pink Floyd's 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond,' then hear the same spacious, vocal-like guitar melodicism carry the solo of Junoon's 'Neend Aati Nahin'.