Brother Dash – Fitra Live

In the following clip, Brother Dash performs Fitra live at a crowd in Rutger University. Dash will be releasing his upcoming album, entitled Poetically Speaking, from the Meem Music label.

Muslim-American Rappers Promote Tolerance in Middle East

In the Fall of 2006, Native Deen traveled to Palestine to spread their message, entertain their fans, and celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid. The following article was release in December 2006.

13 December 2006

Native Deen hip-hop group energizes Palestinian youth in Jerusalem

By Carolee Walker
USINFO Staff Writer

Washington – When Native Deen took hip-hop music to Jerusalem in fall 2006, the group of Muslim-American rappers was moved deeply by the holiness of the place and the energy of the hundreds of teens who attended their concerts. Yet nothing came close to the connection the performers felt to their faith during their Middle East trip.

“I could feel it in the stone and the rocks,” said Naeem Muhammad of Native Deen, a Muslim-American hip-hop group based near Washington that has a strong following in the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Our music inspires Muslims to be better Muslims, but it also gives other people a better view of our faith,” Joshua Salaam told USINFO in an interview.

The rhythm is there, and the beat is contemporary. But the heart of inspirational hip-hop music is in the powerful rap lyrics coaxing listeners to live better lives and be better people.

Native Deen traveled to Turkey, Dubai, the Palestinian Territories and Israel on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, incorporating the teachings of Islam into songs about respect and humanity. At all the concerts, the performers were greeted like “American superstars,” they said. In Dubai, Native Deen won the 2006 Mahabba Award at an event showcasing musicians, artists and filmmakers inspired to spread Islam through art.

The group, founded in 2000, is known for its positive energy, use of traditional percussion and lyrics focused on tolerance and the teachings of Islam.

“We use the Quran as a source of guidance for us when we write our songs,” said Abdul Malik. “We use the morals and guidelines that we find in the Quran to teach people and to guide people.” This means that the beat, or rhythm, comes second, according to Salaam. The lyrics are the most important aspect of the song, so in Native Deen’s sound, the rap is always in front of the percussion.

“Deen” is the Arabic word for “religion,” or way of life.

The group’s members met when they were in their early teens in Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) camps, most often in Ohio, where only percussion instruments were allowed because some Muslims believe that wind and string instruments should be avoided in Islam. Influenced by African-American culture, Salaam, Muhammad and Malik used “beatboxing,” or vocal percussion, and tapping on lunchroom tables to develop with their friends the first Muslim hip-hop sounds that came to be known as MYNA rap. All three Native Deen members can be heard on the MYNA Raps recordings of the early 1990s, but by 2000, Native Deen had set out on its own to record and perform inspirational and spiritual hip-hop.

In the Palestinian Territories and Jerusalem, Native Deen received positive feedback from young people attending the concerts who were impressed that the group uses live drums and percussion instead of electronic tracks. American hip-hop artists often collaborate with international musicians, incorporating traditional instruments and ethnic music. (See related article.)

“We take homegrown instruments and make them work,” Salaam said. The largest challenge for the group is that it performs raps in English. Although in Turkey the group translated some of the raps, Salaam said it was able to see in its audiences that music bridges the language gap.

“[Audiences] might have anti-American sentiment,” Muhammad said. “But they believe in democracy, and they saw us as Muslims who are able to live in America and practice our faith. We got very positive feedback.”

Salaam, who served in the U.S. military in the Air Force, hopes the group will continue to travel internationally because he sees hip-hop as a way to open doors and to encourage religious tolerance and respect.

The rappers performed three concerts in the West Bank, including Al-Quds University in Abu Deis, a village near Jerusalem, in Hebron and Jericho. Prior to arriving in the Middle East, Native Deen gave sold-out concerts at the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the U.S. Chancery in London during the U.K.-wide Festival of Muslim Cultures, which began in January and continues through autumn 2007.

Hip-hop began in the United States 30 years ago in the South Bronx, a borough of New York City. Using turntables to spin old, worn records, teens began to talk over music, mostly on the streets and in basements in what were called block parties, creating an entirely new music genre and dance form. This “talking over,” or MCing (rapping) or DJing (audio mixing or scratching), became the essence of rap. (See related article.)

Native Deen audio clips, song lyrics and other information are available on the group’s Web site.

More information about the Festival of Muslim Cultures is available on the program’s Web site.

For additional information about life in America, see The Arts and Population and Diversity.

(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

CAIR LA Live Entertainment Event

Upcoming Event for Los Angeles Muslim Community

Outlandish’s Callin U – Behind The Video

 

The Callin´U script was written by Isam in close co-operation with Wagas and Lenny. The idea was to give an insight into the daily life of young people in today’s Europe. The director Sohail A. Hassan, who has a background in making feature films, liked the idea. He thought it fitted the music perfectly and could easily picture it. They agreed on making a music video that was both filmic and told a story, and the four of them formed the ideas behind the shooting script in close co-operation.

 

Outlandish wished to use unknown faces to maintain the idea of showing common people, not celebrities.

The boy and the girl were casted before the director got involved with the project. The boy, Nabil, is not an actor, but a friend of Outlandish. The girl, Nassim, pursues an acting career along with her medicine study. The rest of the cast is a mix of experienced actors and specially selected extras.

The Straight Path by 786: The Final Wake-Up Call

By Elham Fathi

Assistant Editor — IOL

Cover of SEVEN8SIX’s last album The Straight Path

Artist: SEVEN8SIX

Album: Straight Path

Year: 2005

Label: Meem Music

Life is a journey, and every journey has its ups and downs, but one has to stand tall and be brave to stop for self-criticism and self-improvement so that one can find peace of mind. And the only way to reach that peace of mind is through pleasing Allah.

And that’s just about what the American Muslim boy-band SEVEN8SIX wants to tell you in their latest album, Straight Path. Strumming to the beat of a soul seeking direction in life, the band echoes a heart’s desire to lead a life full of pleasure, yet pleasing Allah and not straying away from the straight path.

After a relatively successful release in 2003 of their self-titled album, the band released Straight Path in December 2005, followed by their video clip “Meccah” on January 2007.

According to the group’s official website, SEVEN8SIX derives its name from a popular numeric shorthand for the Islamic bismillah (Arabic for: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.) The band members are Shahaab Quraishi, Omar Razzacki, Zafar Razzacki, Muhammad Saadullah (Saad), and Muhammad Saeedullah (Saeed).

Kareem Salama: “There’s something reverent about country music”

[Source: alt.muslim]

For Oklahoma native Kareem Salama, the Islamically-inspired country music he creates is no novelty. We speak with the budding country singer about why his varied influences mesh so well.

By Shahed Amanullah, April 18, 2007

Back in 1992, a relatively obscure film from Britain called “Wild West,” starring the now well-known actor Naveen Andrews, revolved around young British-Pakistani Muslims who loved country music and tried to hit it big in Nashville. The comedic value of the film was galvanised by the unlikelihood of such an unusual cross-cultural leap. But for Oklahoma native Kareem Salama, a budding country singer who explicitly draws from Islamic themes, life isn’t the clash of cultures you may think it is. Salama, whose parents immigrated to America from Egypt, is a product of the Midwestern environment he grew up in, fused with his Muslim upbringing. Kareem released his self-marketed debut album, “Generous Peace” last year and toured sporadically around the US (performing for a crowd at the annual ISNA conference) and the UK (sponsored by the Home Office-supported Radical Middle Way project) to curious, and ultimately appreciative, audiences. He released a special single, “Prayers at Night” to focus attention on last summer’s war in Lebanon. Outside of Muslim circles, Kareem is finding notoriety for the living dichotomy he is, in an American musical landscape where the closest Islam has meshed has been through rap and hip-hop from African-American Muslims. Although Salama is now being treated as a curiosity, he displays a unique sensitivity when questioned about his background – keenly aware of the prejudices people might have of Islam, Midwestern American culture, and (naturally) country music. It’s easy to think that as a young boy, he drifted towards country music as a way to fit in with his non-Muslim friends. But Salama is no novelty. Drawing inspiration from ancient Islamic and English poetry and peppering his deep Southern drawl with Qur’anic references in Arabic, he is keen to explore the parallel and universal themes that stretch beyond religion, time, and art. altmuslim’s Shahed Amanullah recently spoke to Kareem about his music, and he tells us more about John Donne, “Hee Haw”, Imam Shafi’ee, and why he’s “not big on the whole bashing G.W. thing.”

Welcome

Welcome to the Muslim Entertainment Blog. Our goal is to bring you the best in Muslim Entertainment from around the world, with a focus on Muslim Entertainers in the West, with a variety in Nasheed, Comedy, Movies, Documentaries, etc. We hope to add individuals to our blogger list, so as to give a variety of viewpoints on Muslim Entertainment. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy.

* American Muslim *