NEW YORK, May 8: Junoon group gave a frenzied performance at New York’s Town Hall last Thursday where a crowd of 2,000, mostly Pakistanis, swayed to the beat of drums and rhythm of their songs.

In its review of the concert, The New York Times noted: “ The audience was on its feet within minutes after the concert began and stayed there for more than two hours. By the end of the concert, Pakistani flags were being waved onstage and in the audience, not with nationalistic belligerence, but with expatriate pride.”

In what was billed as a concert for peace, the Junoon played songs that find common ground between Sufi spirituality and the ringing, dramatic rock of bands like the U2.

Group’s music has defied fundamentalism and corruption in Pakistan, and its members have criticized Pakistan’s building a nuclear bomb. But the band has garnered millions of fans across South Asia and beyond, and in December the president of Pakistan joined the group onstage, the paper said.

The newspaper review also said: “ The rhythms meshed a rock 4/4 with the galloping cross-rhythms of Bhangra and other Eastern styles; the guitar parts moved between hard-rock chords and sustained sitar-like phrases. Azmat’s vocal lines were often as succinct as rock choruses, swelling with the vibrato of a rock lead singer, but they gave way to airborne, melismatic flourishes out of South Asian pop and the Sufi songs called Qawwali. At times, with Mr Salman Ahmad’s guitar lines wailing over speedy percussion, Junoon could have been an Asian answer to Santana— the popular American group.

The rock group has attained considerable following in the United States in last several years. A documentary made by VH 1 television on Junoon— Islamabad Rock City— has been submitted for EMMY nomination. Its result will be announced in July. The groups’ leader Salman Ahmad has been appearing on many US television channels’ talk shows presenting the softer image of Pakistan as against the stereotype fundamentalist Islamic country.

Junoon may also hit several other American cities including Washington, Minnesota, Houston, Iowa, and Los Angeles.