Muslim Hip-Hop, The Dawah Hope, The Reality and Changing The Game

Graf Image Hip-Hop

Understand What Music Is

There are producers and there are consumers of music. All of us consume music (an audience) while only a few of us actually produce it (artists).  By and large we listen to music as a form of recreation known as entertainment. This entertainment can be relaxing (ambient jazz), it can be devotional (gospel) or it can be stimulating (club hip-hop) and of course other variants.  Musical entertainment can also be very purpose driven helping to facilitate an atmosphere of learning  or it can be quite therapeutic. Music can supposedly entice you to mull around longer in that bookstore and hopefully buy more books or help aid in aggression for the purpose fighting or war and it is used for romance and sex.  The commonality you’ll see however is that music mainly appeals to our emotions.  It is important to remember this point when we talk more about the actual thrust of this article.  Music is not something that appeals PRIMARILY to one’s intellect.  This is not to say that songs like What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye or Fight The Power by Public Enemy do not appeal to more than emotion. But in popular music, the model that most Muslim artists seem to be following, these songs are rarities and often products of great social times.  When we understand what music is and more importantly WHY people listen to it then we can start to understand what music is not and what it realistically can and cannot accomplish.

Pre-Modern To Today’s Music Industry

To understand music today you must understand something of African and American history.  The roots of much of popular music can be traced to the contributions of Africans and African-Americans in particular. Enslaved Africans (and 20%-25% were West African Muslims) brought with them the music of their various cultures. Due to the racism of the dominant White culture African-Americans were “marginalized”.  In other words they were shut out of society except as to be literally slaves of said society. They were forced to develop their own music based on their own culture.  In less than two generations they synthesized their various African cultures with their unique experience of being Black (usually a slave) in America.  Not being allowed into the “mainstream” or the orthodoxy enabled them to grow their own unique, authentic  Black aesthetic (though I’m sure they would have traded the forced rapes, whippings, amputations, humiliation, abuse and subjugation for a “seat at the  pop culture table”).
Fast forward to the early to mid 20th century and you have the emergence of the modern music industry.  Selling sheet music and pianos to middle and upper class Whites gave way to radio and records consumed by the masses.  You also had the explosion of rock n roll, a more palatable version of Black rhythm and blues music sped up for White teenagers and “ideally” performed by Whites who often co-opted the original songs done by Black artists.  Over time this would eventually change but not without the realties of Jim Crow segregation and music industry discrimination, thievery and exploitation (another article yes). As an example of Black Blues/Gospel re-packaged as White Rock ‘N Roll just see Elvis Presley’s  platinum selling Hound Dog which was originally sung by Big Mama Thornton a Black gospel singer.  Due to Black people and thus Black music being “marginalized” artists and their audience created their own market which eventually was taken over by mainstream society.  By the 1970’s and 80’s however a new marginalized form of music was born from Black youth in New York City.  They called it Hip-Hop and the music industry would soon see an emergence even greater than the birth of Rock ‘n Roll.

Does Hip-Hop Really Lend Itself to Religious Messages?

Hip-Hop was born in project parties on Sedgewick Ave in The Bronx ushered in by the Jamaican born DJ Kool Herc.  Its very beginnings are in escapism. No one went to the party on Saturday night to be reminded of their daily grind during the week.  Hip-Hop has never been a traditional form of devotional music like hymns, spirituals, etc that RnB and Rock ‘n Roll co-opted for secular appeal.  But Muslim artists will delude themselves and unnecessarily create a false sense of self if they believe that they are primarily in a genre that is dawah oriented.  This says nothing of their intentions only of the reality of the genre. Hip-Hop isn’t like poetry for example which by design doesn’t “motivate” one to dance or sing or “have a good time”. Poetry by its very nature causes one to reflect, to think, and to be pensive. Thus Spoken Word, especially without music, does lend itself to religious and conscience raising messages unlike a medium like Hip-Hop with its heavy or musical beats and often simple content and rhyme scheme so that it is understood on first listen. Now that being said in fairness Hip-Hop or more accurately its Rap component has at times achieved a similar effect as a true poet. After all what is Rap? Rhythm And Poetry (many don’t know that Rap is an acronym). One need only look at one of Hip-Hop’s pioneering songs The Message by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five which is the classic “CNN” news story of the hood.  Look at these lyrics:

Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just
Dont care
I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far
Cause a man with a tow-truck repossessed my car

Chorus:
Dont push me, cause I’m too close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under …

Interestingly Melle Mel mentioned in an interview that the group didn’t want to record The Message because it was TOO conscious. They wanted to do party music.  Thankfully to society and to their royalty accounts this Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame group recorded one of the most important records in the history of pop music. However by the early 90’s (with the successful release of Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” a death knell to any hope of commercial success and thus widespread appeal of conscious rap was heard).  Why is this story important? It is important because even something much more palatable to mainstream society, i.e. message music that was not religious in nature, could not survive the Hip-Hop machine and the allure of big money, fame and its trappings for artists, producers and the like. If Muslim artists are going to follow this model of “consciousness” then an unromanticized and critical study of the history of this model needs to be undertaken.

A Definition of Dawah

Many look at the title of this article and think that it is an attack on Muslim Hip-Hop as a form of dawah. It is important to read the entire text of this article and the previous ones to understand the context of the argument.  Let us first define dawah. Dawah is an Arabic word used by Muslims in the context of proselytization or education on the faith. To put it simply it is “calling people to Islam”. Dawah has also taken on a modern meaning as also educating people on Islam without necessarily proselytizing.  While there is “good” dawah you can also have bad dawah where your negative speech, actions and behavior gives a bad impression of Islam thereby pushing people AWAY from the faith.  Dawah is mostly a Muslim to Non-Muslim action. But Dawah can also be to other Muslims when we are talking about that 2nd aspect of educating people on the faith and different aspects of it as not every Muslim has the same level of understanding, commitment or practice of Islam. So ultimately Dawah is a religious message. So if you are going to use Hip-Hop as a vehicle to promote a religious message of prosyletization or education has that worked? Who has it worked for? And is that a realistic model for Muslim Hip-Hop?

The Historical Hip-Hop Model

Go back to the beginning of this article and remember why people listen to music. Music is primarily an escape. While it can be “conscience” raising that isn’t its primary function.  And while you yourself may listen to primarily “conscious” music most people do not do this and certainly not exclusively.  In order for something to be “Hip-Hop” it has to fit into something that resembles the genre. With few if any exceptions Muslim Hip-Hop follows, rightly or wrongly, a Non-Muslim Hip-Hop aesthetic. You have a heavier emphasis on the bass drum than in other genres; you have lyrics that rhyme, demonstrative movements on stage, and certain ad libs meant to stimulate the audience (a cultural remnant of the African call and response technique).  But the Hip-Hop model also eschews overt or primarily religious messages.  Virtually all of us who say we were influenced to become Muslims through the Islamic messages of Non-Muslim (primarily 5 percenter) artists need to understand what that model was that we were listening to. The model was not a primarily RELIGIOUS one. These artists mentioned Islam in nuggets. The 5 percenters call them “jewels”. They dropped jewels.  When Big Daddy Kane said “Hold up the peace sign A Salaam Alaikum” in 1989’s classic ‘Ain’t No Half Steppin‘ it was enough to spark some interest in Islam. I agree that this is a subtle form of dawah yes although I question whether that was Kane’s intention. When Wise Intelligent says in ‘Rock Dis Funky Joint‘(early 90’s) “A Salaam Alaikum or a peace sign” and that his way of life “is that of Islam” yes that does have an effect. But Rock Dis Funky Joint wasn’t a Muslim Hip-Hop song. It was a dance record.

But what do we notice from the hip-hop model? We notice that this wasn’t DAWAH rap. These were little morsels on albums that also in most cases contained decidedly unIslamic themes on tracks as well. Brand Nubian does an anti-drug track like “Slow Down” but then Grand Puba talks about “hittin’ skins” (having sex-with someone obviously not his wife).  Even in more respectful tunes dealing with male/female relationships the themes are not Islamic themes just references to perhaps being in a committed relationship or treating your “girlfriend” well.

Furthermore Hip-Hop has at its core the ego of the emcee. Having a kind of swagger and lack of humility about one’s skills is a prerequisite for most emcees. LL Cool J, Nas, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Li’l Wayne have all claimed to be the best emcees. Jay-Z has even called himself Jayhovah (hopefully no Muslim artist would ever say such a thing). But that is Hip-Hop.  That is the Hip-Hop model and Islam is very much “anti-ego” promoting…quite the opposite in fact.  So if Muslim Hip-Hop is going to hold up the dawah mantra then it needs to think about the historical model and how it relates to them and the audience they serve. Ultimately effective dawah is an outcomes based activity.  You can have all the right intentions but you also need to be in an environment and using a medium conducive to achieving your goals.

Okay So If You Read Nothing Else Read This Part

Change The Game…Be Marginal…Be a Leader!

So to reiterate I will stress EMPHATICALLY that I am not saying that Muslim Hip-Hop CANNOT be a form of dawah. I am saying that it is not dawah simply because it is our INTENTION for it to be dawah.   It can be. But there are other factors involved.  For Muslim performance art (and that includes me as a poet as I do not hold myself to some separate standard than anyone else) to be an effective tool for dawah it needs to involve more than takbirat (saying Allahu Akbar) and replacing Non-Muslim hooks with Islamicized choruses.  That’s fine…I don’t ridicule those things at all especially if the intention of the artist is to in effect be adding a modern kind of adhkar (religious chants/phrases that glorify God).  But if in doing these things we also reference the Hip-Hop model of no humility on stage, overly loud music where lyrics are drowned out, encouraging the audience to say your name or dance in the aisles, and having certain movements on stage that really don’t move one towards a higher place then is this in fact dawah?

Again I like Hip-Hop in principle. I grew up on it. I was there for its birth and in my opinion its effective death in the mid 1990’s (although it comes back as the ghost of Hip-Hopmas past with tracks like Get By by Talib Kweli, virtually anything by Lupe Fiasco, and Jesus Walks by Kanye West).  I submit that as  Muslim artists being on the margins can be empowering and put us in a position for cultural leadership or at worst an example to others looking for good, sound, enriching performance art. Dr. Sherman Jackson talks about cultural marginality and its benefits to the marginalized.  Muslim Hip-Hop can flourish AND be a leader in Hip-Hop itself by “changing the game”. And changing the game doesn’t mean simply good intentions and good lyrics (that’s an important beginning of course). It means you change the game by taking the principles of Islam that are ALREADY PRESENT ANYWAY for our daily lives and apply them to your art form.

What if we said no to “swagger”? How would that change the impression and acceptance of our message? What if we said no to performing in clubs and bars? If you still accept a gig in a club/bar what would it be like if you demanded the bar be closed and no drinks consumed during your performances on account that you are Muslim and “that’s how we roll?” What if you said “no” to pants off your butt? (a practice started by homosexual prisoners as a sign of their preference).  When we leave off the negative and unbecoming aspects of our indigenous culture we begin to positively change the game. What if we actually stop our performances if people are going overboard in terms of their adulation i.e. screaming, calling out “I love you so and so”, etc.? What if our events always had a space for prayer and were built around the prayer times?  How about that for dawah? What if we pledged not to use profanity? (yes there are some Muslim rappers that use profanity). What if we made sure our aesthetic was not that the music took precedence over the lyrics? Okay so our shows are not as loud maybe that’s a good thing yes? What if after the event we said that we would do Qiyaam ul-layl (voluntary night prayers) for those that wanted to participate? I mean I can go on and on but you get the point. Let’s change the game. Let’s make Muslim Hip-Hop mean something more than Muslims who say Allahu Akbar on a track but still pretty much follow most of the other Hip-Hop aesthetics.

And this obviously does not pertain just to Muslim Hip-Hop it also pertains to our Nasheed artists, pop/country/rock/alternative/folk singers and even our  annoying, article writing, bald headed, flower power loving poets.  Let us learn from our Prophetic model. Let us learn from that early Muslim marginalized group that was a minority in a fairly hostile society. Let us be beacons. What is a beacon? A beacon is a guiding light, a warning light, a helping light that stands pretty much alone against roaring tides. But ships would crash on the rocks without them. We need beacons.  So in conclusion I say if Dawah is at the core of Muslim Hip-Hop then by all means do your dawah. But understand the game as it was, as it is and as it will likely be and then do something truly Prophetic…Change The Game!
Your brother ‘always and forever’ (a great song by the group Heatwave by the way. Do a search!)

–-Brother Dash

Brother Dash is a Muslim Spoken Word Poet based in the United States. He has performed in front of over 100,000 (including 30,000 at one venue in London) and has been seen in over 4 million TV households on 4 continents.  He has been the subject of a BBC Radio 4 profile on Muslim Spoken Word artists broadcasted to over 2 million in the UK and will be releasing his 2nd album Spoken Soul in the Summer of 2009. He has also performed for several colleges, universities and in well established poetry venues such as The Nuyorican Poet’s Café and The Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. His websites are www.brotherdash.com and www.muslimpoet.com. He can also be reached on facebook under his given name Dasham K Brookins.