words | hasan azam
The following piece forms a discussion on the history of Muslim musicians in the West.
Growing up in the 21st century, I was constantly surrounded by all kinds of music, ranging from hip hop to pop to rock. I remember my cousin downloading songs onto his original iPod from Napster and singing aloud to hits like Taio Cruz’s Dynamite and Linkin Park’s What I’ve Done. As I grew older and began to take an interest in the artists behind the songs on the radio, I realized that none of the artists represented the same background that I came from. Although these things don’t necessarily impact the art made by these people, a little representation can go a long way, especially for a little Muslim boy, the American child of Pakistani immigrants. I wanted to be able to see myself in my favorite artists, the same way that my friends did.
When I was nearing the end of my time in elementary school, I discovered two artists that really started providing the representation that I had wanted. The first of these was rapper Lupe Fiasco. I remember hearing him rap in Words I Never Said, saying “Jihad is not holy war, where’s that in the worship? Murdering is not Islam and you are not observant. And you are not a Muslim”. Just hearing him say these words, confronting stereotypes and being proud of his religion had a very big impact on me growing up. The second artist that I really saw myself in was One Direction, specifically Zayn Malik. Here was a young Pakistani guy who was in the biggest boyband in the world. One Direction infection had spread throughout the school, and I relished in the fact that Zayn had skin like mine, and that his favorite food was samosas, just like my mom would make. I had finally discovered the people I had been looking for: the artists that looked like me; that followed the religion that I did.
At the time, it seemed to me that these artists were anomalies. I thought that Muslims making it big in music was a relatively recent phenomenon, and that we were piggybacking off the contributions of others. I thought that the few Muslims I saw in the music industry were following musical trends set by others, rather than setting trends themselves. However, as I’ve grown older, I now know that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Muslims have been an integral part of American popular music since its inception in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
One of the first wholly American styles of music to gain traction and recognition across the world was blues music, developed in the American South by African slaves, many of whom were Muslim. An estimated 30% of African slaves brought to America were Muslim, so it makes sense that they would use the Islamic influences in their daily lives to contribute to African American music and culture. Blues music is heavily influenced by “field holler” songs, sung by the slaves as they worked in the fields. The Muslim slaves added their own flair to their field holler songs, with African diaspora historian Sylviane Douf describing the way they sang “words that seem to quiver and shake” as very reminiscent of the athan, or Islamic call to prayer.
After blues, the next evolution in American popular music was jazz. As jazz took off in the early 20th century, America was racially divided, and segregation created a harsh reality for many upcoming artists. As such, many jazz musicians converted to Islam and adopted Arab names to avoid being discriminated against for having traditionally African American names. One such artist was Yusef Lateef, jazz saxophonist and close friend of the legendary John Coltrane. Other jazz musicians traveled to Africa and rediscovered the Muslim religion of their ancestors, bringing it back with them to America. Notable examples of these include Lynn Hope and multiple-time Grammy award winner Art Blakey. They were well-documented to have been devout and practicing Muslims while still pursuing their jazz careers. According to a 1953 article in the Ebony Times, Hope was known to have been frequently “shooed away by police for prostrating Mecca-ward in public parks”.
With their roots in the disco and R&B of the 70’s, hip hop and rap burst onto the music scene in the late 1980’s and especially the 1990’s. One of the biggest Muslim hip hop artists of the 1980’s was Rakim, regarded by many as the greatest emcee of all time. He was followed by the hip hop collective A Tribe Called Quest, whose founding members Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad were Muslims. At the turn of the 1990’s, the most controversial group in America was NWA, whose founding member Ice Cube described himself as being a Muslim.
Given the continued popularity of hip hop and rap in America, it should come as no surprise that there are still a couple Muslim artists that are popular in the present day. Perhaps the biggest of these at the moment is DJ Khaled, famous for riding jet skis and giving everyone major keys to success. He has multiple hits under his belt, including I’m the One, Wild Thoughts, and No Brainer. Lupe Fiasco, who was one of the artists who inspired my search for Muslims in American music, is another example of a Muslim hip hop artist making it big, with famous songs such as The Show Goes On, and Battle Scars. Although not American, Zayn Malik still is popular in America as a successful solo artist, having recently released his sophomore album. Another popular Muslim artist is YUNA, a rising singer who has collaborated with Beyonce and Usher.
Outside of the mainstream, there have also been smaller music scenes heavily influenced by Muslims and Islam. As I entered high school, I became very interested in counterculture and punk movements and learned about New York’s burgeoning “Taqwacore” music scene. The word taqwa is Arabic for being conscious or fearful of god, and the suffix -core comes from hardcore punk. These bands write very political songs, often with messages discussing the war on terror and islamophobia. One thing that I found very intriguing about this music scene in particular is that, although most American Muslim musicians have been of African descent, the Taqwacore scene is composed almost entirely of Pakistani-Americans and Caucasian Muslim converts.
Muslims have always been a part of America’s “Melting Pot", and that includes the melting pot that is the music industry. My hope is that more of these Muslim artists in the industry get recognized as Muslim, and that this representation allows more Muslim Americans to connect to their musical history and legacy.
photos | mahum kudia and wardah seedat