Banned at Home, Pakistani Group Due in L.A.

Junoon is not a name that will register with most American music fans. But on the other side of the world, the Pakistani band is inspiring Beatles-like reactions from hordes of Indian and Pakistani devotees who describe themselves as Junoonis.

On Aug. 16 at the House of Blues, Los Angeles listeners will have the opportunity to make their own, in-person evaluations of Junoon, whose latest album, “Azadi,” has sold more than half a million copies in India in the first three months of its release. (None of the group’s five albums is yet available in the U.S., although “Azadi,” which is on the EMI-Asia label, can be ordered as an import.)

Junoon’s music is a wildly eclectic mixture of ‘70s rock, traditional Punjabi folk melodies and passionate, qawwali-tinged vocals (from lead singer Ali Azmat) mixed with occasional quotations from the Koran. The diversity of the music reflects the makeup of the group. Guitarist Salman Ahmad spent some of his youth in New York, where he met American bassist Brian O’Connell (who now lives in Karachi, Pakistan). They identify Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Santana, Led Zeppelin and Queen as influences, and one of their tunes is a Hendrix-inspired version of the Pakistani national anthem.

Less obviously for American listeners, Junoon’s lyrics often take highly charged political points of view. Its song “Ehtesaab,” for example, a tract about accountability and social corruption, was released a month before the fall of the Pakistani government of Benazir Bhutto with a video that includes a scene of a horse eating in a luxury hotel, an obvious dig at the polo ponies of Bhutto’s husband, Ali Zadari. The government that succeeded Bhutto banned the video from state television for the next six months.

Junoon has also played a role in the tensions associated with the Pakistani-India nuclear confrontation. The same week in May that India tested three nuclear devices near the Pakistani border, Junoon was performing songs calling for peace in New Delhi before 50,000 young Indians.

At the moment, despite its devoted followers, the group is banned from performing anywhere in Pakistan. But the combination of Junoon’s intriguing music and its ability to captivate audiences is clearly going to lead to international popularity.

Mickey’s World: Drummer Mickey Hart has been in the vanguard of world music virtually since the time he joined the Grateful Dead three decades ago. He was front and center in the Dead’s legendary drum jams, and it was Hart who generated performances with global percussionists such as Airto Moriera, Babatunde Olatunji and Hamza El Din.

Hart’s 1991 album, “Planet Drum,” was a celebration that brought together some of the world’s finest drummers. Released to coincide with Hart’s illuminating world music book of the same title, it won the first world music Grammy.

In the interim, Hart has worked with the Smithsonian’s Endangered Music Project and established the “World” series for Rykodisc, a collection that covers an enormous global spectrum of music.

With the just-released “Supra lingua” (Rykodisc), he revisits “Planet Drum” territory with an extraordinary ensemble of international musicians: Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, son of legendary tabla player Alla Rakha; Puerto Rico’s Giovanni Hidalgo on congas and timbales; Nigeria’s Sikiru Adepoju on dundun and djembe; Bakithi Kumalo, bass; David Garibaldi, drum set.

What makes the album unique, however, are the sounds that have triggered its name. Hart performs on an instrument that he describes as RAMU (Random Access Musical Universe) that is loaded with a huge array of sampled sounds.

“It’s a dream instrument,” he says, “an encyclopedia of sound. You can jump from rain forest to gamelan to jungle drums.”

Most interesting of all, there are digitally processed vocals from Afro-Cuban healer Gladys “Bobi” Cespedes, Jesus Diaz and a group of Bobby McFerrin vocal students. Their voices soar through the percussion, uttering phonetic sounds that are simultaneously of no language and of all languages. The effect is dramatic.

“The voice is the most precious gift you can give,” says Hart, “because on the breath comes the voice, and the breath is the life force, besides the rhythm of things. . . . When you have voices singing over percussion inside a deep, fur-lined groove, to me that’s home.”

Quick Disc Picks: The only album legendary Brazilian singer Elis Regina recorded for EMI, “Elis Regina: Vento de Maio” (Blue Note/Hemisphere), has been issued in a stirring collection that is supplemented with three rare tracks. . . . Putumayo’s “Reggae Around the World” is a colorful examination of reggae’s impact beyond the shores of Jamaica, with tracks from Brazil, Mali, Sudan and Ghana, as well as selections from Ernest Ranglin and Burning Spear. . . . Florent Pagny brings the traditional French cabaret singing style into the ‘90s with “Savoir Aimer” (ILS/PolyGram), an entrancing album that has already sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide.