Canadian artist The Narcicyst in his Video «Hamdulillah» (2010) documenting the happenings in the Middle East. Bringing a Muslim influence into rap he’s calling on his brothers and sisters to stay humble and be grateful for what they have. «Hamdulillah – Thanks to God», a word that is mumbled in almost every second sentence in Arabic

Speaking Truth to Power

Short Essay

In its series Future Academics Norient presents Bachelor or Master theses in musicology, ethnomusicology or popular music studies to promote young academics. This time Anne Haack from the Freie Universität Berlin (North American Studies) is focussing on the influence of the Civil Rights Movement and islam on arab hip hop in North America. At the same time Haack shows us a reflection on Arab hip hop after the Arab uprisings. (Read an excerpt below or see full thesis PDF here.)

Hip Hop has been since its beginning in the 1970's a voice of the unheard, marginalized and the ones suffering from poor social conditions. The first hip hop artists were Afro-Americans who spoke out about the dire circumstances they were experiencing in the ghetto's of New York. As a result, hip hop served, especially in the beginning, as a political tool, got people to stand up for their rights and enabled them to use hip hop as a peaceful outlet for their anger.

Despite hip hop's popularity and worldwide recognition nowadays, there is one fact that has been largely overlooked until now: Islam's strong influence on hip hop since its very beginnings. Islamic sects that formed in the U.S. during the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) in 1950–1980 had a strong presence in the Afro-American community and on the streets. It was them that would influence the very first hip hop artists later on.

In spite of this pioneering and continuing role, Islam as a cultural force in hip-hop is severely under-documented. In the most recent oversight, Jeff Chang's exhaustive hip-hop history «Can't Stop, Won't Stop» (Picador, 2005) pays only fleeting attention to the Muslim connection. Elsewhere in mainstream media, the Muslim connection is never spoken aloud, even in the middle of thorough analysis and journalism. Ted Swedenburg calls this «almost willful avoidance.» In this, there are parallels to the larger invisibility of black Muslims, who have been shut out of many conversations around the role of Islam in America (Naheem 2008, 303–04).

Reclaiming their identity through lyrical poetry and religion, several of the first hip hop artists in the States, like Rakim, Afrika Bambaataa, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan, LL Cool J, KRS-One, Ice Cube or Chuck D from Public Enemy either joined the Islam influenced Five Percenters (Nation of Gods and Earths), the Nation of Islam (NOI) or the Sunni Muslim movement, reflecting their spirituality in their lyrics, their actions and their names.

Especially the language of the Five Percenters had a strong influence on early hip hop. Expressions like «peace», «dropping science» and «the bomb» came straight from the teaching lessons of the Five Percenters, with which students would battle each other. «G», which is now referenced as «Gangster», was initially dubbed with «God» from the Supreme Alphabet of the Five Percenters' founder Clarence 13X, also known as Allah (Knight, 2007, 178).

Marlex Marl feat. Craig G – Droppin' Science. Marley Marl was one of the premier producers of hip hop in hip hop's Golden Age producing tracks and records for Erik B. & Rakim, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane and many more.

Nowadays, rappers reference Islam through their lifestyle, their lyrics and blessings they speak out before a show. Erykah Badu opened her record The Healer in Arabic with «Alhamdulillah» (praise God), as well as Eve did in English on her album Eve of Destruction: «All Praise is due to Allah».

Due to hip hop's large commercialization since the 90's, the more conscious and rebellious hip hop1 is now found in countries, where marginalized youth speak up for their rights or where political and social conditions are at stake. Countries that in the recent years experienced political uprisings, such as Tunisia, Syria or Egypt are now the places where a new form of Arabic (Muslim) hip hop «speaks truth to power».

Syrian-American artist Omar Offendum supports his struggling brothers and sisters in Syria through his lyrics, concerts and peace ralleys.

Several hip hop tracks were created in the wake of the Arab uprisings (NPR 2011), and spread within hours over the internet. These tracks and the uprisings itself influenced new productions from Arab-American artists, so that Arab (Muslim) hip hop took a full spin from North America to the MENA2 states and back.

Canadian artist The Narcicyst documents the occurrences in Egypt.

The key artists from the U.S. and Canada, whose lyrics are being analyzed in the thesis, are Omar Offendum, The Narcicyst and Khaled M. All of them express their message in unique ways, either speaking up actively against oppression, using their lyrics as a real life documentation or conveying their message in a rather poetically, religious way. All of these three artists show key aspects of the roots of hip hop in their lyrics, such as parallels to speeches from the CRM, religious aspects in their lyrics similar to the wording from the Five Percenters, or using their voice to stand up for the rights of their oppressed brothers and sisters in Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, while at the same time reclaiming their identity as Arab-American artists.

The aim of this thesis is to show the influence of Islam, Islamic sects and the Civil Rights Movement in the roots of hip hop, drawing a connection between the foundation years in the 1970's, to how Arab-American (Muslim) hip hop artists keep these roots alive in their lyrics nowadays, in response to the Arab uprisings.

1. Conscious Rap or Conscious Hip Hop: «As Michael Eric Dyson explains, conscious rap is ‹rap that is socially aware and consciously connected to historic patterns of political protest and aligned with progressive forces of social critique› (Dyson, 2007:64)»
2. MENA: Middle East and North Africa.

List of References

Mohaiemen, Naeem. 2008. «Fear of a Muslim Planet: The Roots of Islamic Hip-Hop». In Sound Unbound, edited by Paul D. Miller. London: MIT Press.

Knight, Michael Muhammad. 2007. The Five Percenters. Oxford: Oneworld.

Dyson, Michael Eric. 2007. Know What I Mean?. Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street.

The Rap Songs of the Arab Spring. 2011. July 09, NPR. (https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2011/06/09/137067390/the-rap-songs-of-the-arab-spring?t=1561447508719).

Biography

Anne Haack completed her B.A. in North American Studies and Media and Communication Studies in Berlin, focussing on pop culture in Middle East and Arabic influences on music in Western countries. She lives in Berlin, dividing her time between being a tutor, yoga teacher, DJ and artist. Apart from that you can also find her on the road travelling or researching in Morocco. Follow her on SoundCloud.

Published on April 12, 2015

Last updated on May 01, 2024

Topics

Power

Protest

Religion

All Topics

Special

Future Academics

print as pdf

St Clement’s Church, Roghadal, Isle of Harris (photo: Les Hull, Wikimedia Commons)

Gaelic Psalms: A Transforming Tradition

Short Essay

by Martin Schröder

In its series Future Academics Norient presents theses in musicology, ethnomusicology or popular music studies to promote young academics. The Gaelic psalm-singing to be presented below by PhD student Martin Schröder is a kind of religious chant in the Outer Hebrides and the west coast of Scotland. It is unique in its form and a wonderful example of the variability of musical practices in the context of different cultural influences. (Read this summary below or see full thesis PDF here.)

In the middle of the 16th Century the Protestant Reformation in the form of Presbyterianism spread in the whole of Scotland under the leadership of John Knox. This led, as in other parts of Europe, to significant changes in the musical form of worship. While previously the musical praise of God was reserved for the choir only, from then on all members of the community were allowed to participate – the practice of religion as an individual act, carried out in the language of the people rather than in Latin, guided by principles of simplicity.

To satisfy the desired simplicity, people chose the psalms of David. These were sung in unison and unaccompanied, a practice that had been taken over from the English Puritans (Morag 1994, 1). As in many communities a lot of people were not capable of reading, although Scotland is a country with a long and high literary culture, the practice of reading the line was taken over in worship. This practice consists of a precentor reading each line of the verse, prior to its repetition by the whole congregation.

It wasn’t until 1659 that the first psalm collections were printed in Gaelic Francis 1966, 261). Since the ballad meter that had been used for the psalm text (change of four-stressed and three-stressed iamb) was alien to the Gaelic language and literature, and therefore completely unfamiliar to the Gaelic speaking listeners (Thomson 1983, 244), the tradition of «reading the line» survived in some communities of the Outer Hebrides until today, for this practice breaks the four-stanza form and thus weakens the «effects» of the meter (Morag 1994, 2). The melody is sung very slowly and melismatically «stretched». Since every member of the congregation individually varies the tempo and outline of the melody by adding passing notes and ornamentation an iridescent sound structure emerges in free heterophony that fills the entire church room. Thus the service is a very intimate and personal issue also in terms of music.

Although the Gaelic psalms disappeared from general use at the end of the 19th century, they can occasionally be heard in Gaelic services of the Presbyterian Church and in family worship (Morag 1994, 3). This tradition, however, has endured not only in these contexts, but also in songs whose compositional guiding principle involves the mix of this specific vocal music with elements of Anglo-American rock and pop music: the stylistics of Gaelic psalm singing has survived the ages. In this paper the music of Runrig and Capercaillie is introduced.

Capercaillie celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2014

The two bands have played a major part in the Gaelic Revival in Scotland from the 1970s on and are still active today. Both groups have torn down stylistic boundaries in their work and thus created space for musical innovation. They are representatives of the musical genre of «Folk Rock» and «Electric Folk», repectively and have taken on the tradition of Gaelic psalm singing in two of their songs, but treated it in different ways.

In «Gaelic Psalm Theme» Capercaillie combine the historical recording of psalm 46 as sung by Donald MacLeod (School of Scottish Studies 1994, Track 3) with modern synthesizer sounds and percussion samples.

In «An Ubhal As Àirde» (1987) the band Runrig simulates the sound of a whole congregation through technical manipulation of the recording speed.

With regard to musical hybridization and involving theories of Max Peter Baumann and Wolfgang Holzinger it is the aim of this paper to examine how and to what extent Runrig and Capercaillie achieve a mixing of traditional musical practices on the one hand and pop and rock music on the other as well as a recontextualization of the musical material in the two songs introduced above.