Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture

In dense and turgid academic prose, political scientist Aidi explores the ways that Muslim youth culture across the globe has embraced various forms of music, from hip-hop to jazz, as a means of protesting, proclaiming identity, and building community. At the same time, he observes, nation-states from Saudi Arabia and Iran to France and the U.S. monitor musical tastes among youth, especially in fringe urban areas, to calculate the power this music might have for undermining and challenging the status quo. Through interviews with many musicians, Aidi reveals the power of music to challenge religious and political categories. For example, in Philadelphia, Luqman Abdul Haqq, who as Kenny Gamble wrote some of the 1970s most-recognized hits of the Philly R&B sound, has ruffled Muslim feathers by building a center for R&B in his Philly neighborhood, asserting that faith, music, and economic uplift go together. In Pakistan, the rock band Junoon, led by Salman Ahmad, combines the poetry of Rumi with the rhythms of Led Zeppelin in their protest music, but they also drew the ire of orthodox Pakistani Sufi mullahs with a narrow interpretation of Rumi. While Aidi’s study explores uncovered territory in music and politics, its labyrinthine structure turn this into a tuneless composition on what is a compelling and timely subject. (Mar.)