Salman Ahmad - Music Career

Music Career

Ahmad started his music career with Vital Signs, but left after their debut album due to creative differences. In 1990, Ahmad formed Junoon, South Asia's biggest and longest-lasting rock band, along with Ali Azmat. After Junoon's international acclaim and success, Ahmad reached new heights, which included being an ambassador for peace with numerous international awards under his belt.

Ahmad released his first solo album, Infiniti, in mid-2005, but contrary to rumors, he did not dissolve Junoon. The first video for Infiniti was "Al-Vida", which aimed to promote HIV awareness, and featured famous Pakistani actress Nadia Jamil playing the role of a woman whose husband dies of AIDS; Jamil's character goes on to educate street people about preventing the disease.

He also played an important role in raising funds and awareness for the massive earthquake that hit Pakistan in October, 2005. In September 2006, Ahmad was personally invited by former US President Bill Clinton to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative panel in New York on September 21, which featured many other prominent guests such as Bill Gates, Pervez Musharraf, Queen Rania, and others.

Ahmad also appeared on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, the PBS documentary The Rock Star and The Mullahs, and the BBC documentary It's My Country Too. He also appeared on CNN and NPR to speak on behalf of Pakistanis and Muslims.

In an interview with ARY One World in 2007, Ahmad said he would be working with Madonna and Bono. He has been touring actively, performing and speaking at prestigious U.S. institutions such as Columbia University, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Purdue, Stanford, MIT, and UT Austin.

He has also been teaching a class on music titled "Islamic Music and Culture of South Asia", as a guest faculty at Queens College. This year, he started his second semester as a guest faculty. Ahmad also worked with Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan and Dave Stewart to record a song for 'Green Peace', which was produced and mixed by Junoon's producer John Alec.

Ahmad performed at the Cherry Blossom Festival on April 6, 2008 in Washington DC. He also performed in Toronto on November 4, 2008 at Roy Thomson Hall as part of the sold-out 'A Mystical Journey concert'. With stops in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal, and featuring 60 musicians and dancers from various parts of the Muslim world, the concert marked the Golden Jubilee initiative of His Highness Prince Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims.

On December 10, 2007 Ahmed and Indian tabla maestro Samir Chatterjee performed together at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo City Hall in the honour of the former American vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who were the winners of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2007.

On March 1, 2008, Ahmad performed with Yale Strom (a world leading Klezmer artist) at Temple Beth Sholom in Roslyn Heights as part of another "Common Chords II" concert celebrating Muslim and Jewish Music. Together with Strom, Ahmad leads the multi-faith ensemble Common Chords, whose members include Chatterjee, dhol player Sunny Jain, bassist Mark Dresser, vocalist Elizabeth Schwartz and others He also performed with Oscar and multi Grammy award winner Melissa Etheridge, with whom he recorded a duet called "Ring the Bells". Etheridge hoped to present this track to President-elect Barack Obama. They also performed at Etheridge's album release concerts in New Jersey and Atlantic City in November 2008.

About these performances, Ahmad said; “I dedicate these performances to the Pakistan lawyers movement for the restoration of the Supreme Court judges and independence of the judiciary as well as Pakistan's civil society, media, students and rights activists who have heroically protested against the Musharraf government's illegal action of imposing emergency in Pakistan.”