ABSTRACT
From 2000 to 2005, nasyid (pronounced na-sheed), a genre of Islamic popular music that has been around for decades, occupied a prominent position in the music and recording industries of Muslim Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. Nasyid continues to be tremendously popular among Islamic youth in both countries, providing a young, urban, often well-educated audience with the soundtrack for a modern Muslim Malay lifestyle. Although allegedly its roots are to be found in Middle Eastern student activism, the verbal art of the a cappella song genre in Muslim Southeast Asia also attracts followers in universities and colleges. Scholars, critics, and activists have suggested that “campus Islam” has been instrumental in the current celebrity status of nasyid. 1 However, as will be illustrated in this chapter, Middle Eastern styled activism is not the sole role model for the development of nasyid; at times, Western forms of popular culture have been incorporated into the genre. In fact, present-day nasyid music reveals the careful balance of “East and West” that is currently so much debated throughout the Islamic world.
