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Idhan on Auto-Tune? British Islamic Hip hop and controversies on using modern sound technologies
Abstract
The transformation of Islamic revival movements worldwide through the creation of a new culture industry has been widely observed and studied. The more recent emergence of an Islamic oriented artistic scene and the subsequent evolution of an Islamic oriented music scene in Muslim communities worldwide is one of the latest developments. In Great Britain, this music scene has experimented with very different music genres, where the traditional forms of Islamic devotional music now increasingly blends with different styles like Pop, Folk and Rap. The high diversification and divergence in the British Islamic music scene is also connected to the fact that not only do Muslim music practitioners from the main Muslim immigrant countries participate in this scene but also, increasingly, do different newcomer Muslim groups, white European and Afro-Caribbean converts. The latter have played a significant role in the development of an Islamic Hip hop scene in the UK. This development is, obviously, not happening in an uncontested way. Islamic Hip hop, at least in the UK, is probably the most opposed and marginalized of the different music genres within the Islamic popular culture scene. This is why Hip hop practitioners struggle to bring the sounds of Hip hop in line not only with the requirements of normative Islam – itself not unequivocally defined – but also with an Islamic sonic imaginary that, even less explicitly, implies certain ideas about what sounds are conducive to cultivate pious affect. Most crucial in this effort to bring Hip hop and Islam under the same umbrella is the cautious approach to modern sound technologies that are generally at the heart of (secular) Hip hop productions. The paper investigates the complex articulations (musical and discursive) around the proper use of sound technologies in contemporary Islamic Hip hop production in the UK. What kind of relation do Islamic Hip hop artists and their audiences establish between modern sound technologies and the sacred? How is that reflected in the music and the musical performances? How and when do these technologies shape, produce or disrupt specific pious sensibilities? How and when might they question established epistemologies of sound as they underlie many Islamic inspired listening practices?
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Europe
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries