ABSTRACT
On a warm Sunday afternoon, in early September 2011, large crowds are strolling around the grounds of a nineteenth-century non-conformist higher education college in Manchester. As the autumnal sunshine and leafy gardens are enjoyed by all, to the rear of the college, in an old peaked chapel that juts from the back of the bricked building, a man, dressed in a dark, buttoned-up suit and tie, moves across a small stage with microphone in hand. Smiling broadly as he scatters flowers to a swaying crowd, the man sings into the microphone. Supported by pre-recorded backing harmonies and percussion emitted from a temporary sound system, he gently unfolds lyrics praising Allah and the beauty of creation, attempting to evoke notions of love and compassion. This is the 2011 Eid Festival, at the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Manchester and the performer, Khaleel Muhammad, has travelled from London to perform a selection of English-language nasheeds (religious songs) for those at the celebration. He is just one of several celebrity performers that are here to contribute to the nasheed concert, while outside Muslim families enjoy the food stalls, the activity tents and the small funfair. In many respects, this celebration and similar events across the country are
part of an emergent Islamic entertainment culture – a culture that incorporates music as a central, distinctive but rather ambiguous practice. The event was typical of its kind: organised by a Muslim civil society and staffed by young Muslim volunteers in jeans and t-shirts, it aimed to combine a religious celebration with the gaiety of a wholesome and popularised entertainment culture. The nasheed concert itself was hosted by a British-Algerian R&B musician, Rahim, and involved performances by Khaleel Muhammad and three other well-known, English-language British nasheed artists. These celebrated musicians are all entertainers, public figures and religious mediators in their own right. They are a familiar presence in the British Muslim media market and across the Islamic events circuit. Often eschewing live instrumentation of any kind, these musicians restrict themselves to vocal renditions, sometimes with synthesised percussion, but otherwise drawing much of their influence from the pop music
sounds of contemporary Britain. It is an emergent Muslim musical culture – little more than a decade or so old – that attempts to fuse religious observance and spiritual expression with global pop sounds and the faint traces of an Islamic musical/poetic tradition. Amir Awan, for instance, is a smartly dressed mathematics graduate, of
Pakistani ethnicity, who works in the City of London for a major bank. In his spare time he writes, records and performs his own nasheeds, guided by his knowledge of tajwid (principles of Quranic recitation), and accompanied by a sound that is consciously inspired by Michael Jackson. Elsewhere in London, Poetic Pilgrimage, an assertive female hip hop duo from Bristol, with Jamaican roots, can be found blasting out lyrics on spirituality, global politics and the rights of women. Meanwhile, Usman Rehman, a young British Pakistani from Bradford, plies his trade across the north of England. As well as reinterpreting popularised qawwali songs (Sufi religious songs), he writes his own Englishlanguage nasheeds, with vocal sounds that are reminiscent of both Western pop music and classical South Asian performance. In Birmingham, the folk-rock group Silk Road combine a number of musical styles – from Irish folk music, to funk, blues and Indian classical music – producing elaborate instrumental music that is overlaid with earnest lyrics inspired by the Qur’an, Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) and poetry of Rumi. In this chapter I highlight some of the key issues surrounding this cultural
phenomenon and more broadly outline the contours of this musical scene. In fitting with the overarching theme of this edited collection, I pay particular attention to the dimensions of youth, discussing the socio-cultural and ethicalreligious motivations that are inextricably woven into the sonic and semantic fabric of Muslim music. I begin the chapter by considering some of the issues that surround the study of young Muslims in Britain, including a brief argument to locate Muslim musicians within this thematic context. This is followed by a history of selected Muslim musicians in Britain – a series of cultural narratives, no doubt incomplete, that crisscross the social soundscapes of twentiethcentury Britain. Using this historical context as a point of reference, I argue that contemporary Muslim musicians represent a new and distinctive wave of cultural producers. They are an emergent generation, deeply thoughtful and religious, as well as rooted in the intricacies and dynamics of Britain’s contemporary social and cultural landscape. In the final section of the chapter I will flesh out this argument by describing in detail the different styles of music that characterise Muslim music in Britain – nasheeds, syncretic styles, and Muslim hip hop – by providing short vignettes of musicians for illustrative purposes.
