Keep on rockin' in the free (and not-so-free) world

I have been happy to see musicians like Kareem Salama, the Muslim country singer, and TIMZ, the "Chuck Norris is gonna get schooled" rapper getting some love in the media. Even Sami Yusuf's important work on Darfur is getting a fair amount of attention in the Muslim world and the West (as is co-headliner at the Muslim Live 8 concert Outlandish). There are however, stories that fly under the radar.

Pop and hip-hop stars can sometimes have a rough go of it in the Arab/Muslim world, but the criticisms are usually from fringe conservative elements and center on artists being too sexy or the artists being too bootylicious (You know it is Asia because no self-respecting Arab would complain about a woman being too curvy, and since when was Malaysia more conservative than Indonesia?). However, it is really the heavy metal bands in the region that are in the most precarious position. As has been discussed before on Kabobfest, metal bands are often charged with being "satanic".

Even in the diaspora, punk/metal bands hold a unique position. Rolling Stone magazine, has a profile of a bunch of Muslim punk bands on their self proclaimed, Taqwatour:

Twenty-four hours after leaving the Toledo mosque, Boston's Kominas -- Punjabi for "the Bastards" -- are playing in a packed basement in a rundown corner of Chicago's Logan Square. Local punks mix with curious young Muslims -- including a few girls wearing head scarves -- as Kominas frontman Shahjehan Khan launches into the opening lines of "Sharia Law in the U.S.A.": "I am an Islamist!/And I am an anti-Christ!" Nearby, mohawked bassist Basim Usmani -- whose T-shirt reads frisk me i'm muslim -- slaps out the song's bass line while viciously slam-dancing with a dude in a woman's burqa.

The article includes a hilarious account of the the tour playing in the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference. It just reeks of how ISNA is trying to progressive and relevant, but until it gets some courage is never going to be more than the meat-market it is today. I also love the part of the article that is like "gasp! there were girls with head scarves there!" News flash, them muhaja-babes can dance and run and even think! (end rant).

Another noteworthy project is the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad (click link to watch a trailer):

Four regular guys from Iraq had a dream. Maybe you could call it an American dream. All they wanted was to play heavy metal music in their own country. Firas, Faisal, Tony and Marwan found a deep passion in listening to American metal bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden. They had one goal: get people off by playing metal as hard as they can. They formed the band Acrassicauda, Latin for "Black Scorpion," in 2001....Acrassicauda represent the old Iraq on some level because there is a Sunni, a Shia and a Christian in the band playing metal together harmoniously.

If you have some time to kill, start searching the names of the groups in these articles or keyword searches like "metal and Egypt" into Myspace or Youtube. It is a crazy world out there.

Why are these stories so interesting? I feel it is because Arab Punk rockers and Chaldean rappers do not fit in the neat boxes and narratives forced upon us. As the Egyptian-American artist, and metal fan, Nader Sadek has pointed out in relation to his new exhibition in NYC:

“For a while now, I've been interested in exploring what different cultures perceive of as extreme. 'The Faceless' grows out of years of walking the crowded streets of Downtown Cairo dressed as a full-on death metal fan (i.e., long black hair, long-sleeve Morbid Angel/Deicide t-shirts, and an overall grungy look). Then, in a sort of twisted reversal, I decided to walk the streets of New York's Times Square in the black garb of a fully veiled woman. The intense reactions I got in each case confirmed for me the potential of this project,”...