Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T21:09:57.622Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hardcore Muslims: Islamic Themes in Turkish Rap in Diaspora and in the Homeland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Thomas Solomon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Islam has, according to various estimates, between 900 million and 1.4 billion adherents in more than fifty countries, making it the second-largest religion in the world. Rap music and hip-hop youth culture have also, in their brief history, achieved global status, as the essays in Tony Mitchell's edited volume Global Noise (2001b) illustrate. It is perhaps not surprising that the long-standing world religion Islam and the more recently global musical genre of rap have intersected in various ways. Both the religion and the musical genre have spread over the globe as people and ideas move around, and people use the material and expressive resources at their disposal in practices of identity construction. It is not necessarily contradictory or paradoxical that some people may find it useful and compelling to imagine their identities using both Islam and rap music.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 38 , 2006 , pp. 59 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 By The International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

ADL Report n.d. “ADL Report: ‘Skinhead International.'” Germany, 1995. http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/adl/skinhead-international/skins-germany.html (accessed 3 December 2003).Google Scholar
Ahmed, Akbar S., and Donnan, Hastings 1994a Ed. Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1994b “Islam in the Age of Postmodernity.” In Ahmed and Donnan 1994a: 1–20.Google Scholar
Allen, Ernest Jr. 1996 “Making the Strong Survive: The Contours and Contradictions of Message Rap.” In Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, ed. William Perkins, 159–91. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
AlSayyad, Nezar, and Castells, Manuel, ed. 2002 Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, Culture and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization. Oxford: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Arican, Tunca 2005 “Türkçe hip-hop sahnesindeki biçkin delikanlilar [Fearless youth on the Turkish hip-hop stage].” Kirkbudak: Anadolu Halk İInançlari Araştirmalari 1/4: 74–89.Google Scholar
Ayata, Sencer 1996 “Patronage, Party, and State: The Politicization of Islam in Turkey.” Middle East Journal 50: 40–56.Google Scholar
Bennett, Andy 2000 Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Çağlar, Ayşe Ş. 1995 “German Turks in Berlin: Social Exclusion and Strategies for Social Mobility.” New Community 21: 309–23.Google Scholar
1998 “Popular Culture, Marginality and Institutional Incorporation: German-Turkish Rap and Turkish Pop in Berlin.” Cultural Dynamics 10: 243–61.Google Scholar
Çelik, Ayşe Betül 2003 “Alevis, Kurds and Hemşehris: Alevi Kurdish Revival in the Nineties.” In P. White and Jongerden 2003: 141–57.Google Scholar
Çinar, Alev 1999 “Cartel: Travels of German-Turkish Rap Music.” Middle East Report 29: 43–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2001 “Cartel'in rap'i, melezlik ve milliyetçiliğin sarsilan sinirlari: Almanya'da Türk olmak Türkiye'de Türk olmaya benzemez [Cartel's rap, hybridity, and the shaken-up limits of nationalism: Being a Turk in Germany is not like being a Turk in Turkey].” Doğu Bati 15: 141–51.Google Scholar
Clarke, Gloria L. 1999 The World of the Alevis: Issues of Culture and Identity. Istanbul: AVC Publications.Google Scholar
Decker, Jeffrey Louis 1994 “The State of Rap: Time and Place in Hip Hop Nationalism.” In Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, ed. Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose, 99–121. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Diesel, Caroline 2001 “Bridging East and West on the ‘Orient Express': Oriental Hip-Hop in the Turkish Diaspora of Berlin.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 13: 165–87.Google Scholar
Elflein, Dietmar 1998 “From Krauts with Attitudes to Turks with Attitudes: Some Aspects of Hip-Hop History in Germany.” Popular Music 17: 255–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eure, Joseph D., and Spady, James G., ed. 1991 Nation Conscious Rap: The Hip Hop Vision. New York: PC International Press.Google Scholar
Greve, Martin 1997 Alla Turca: Musik aus der Türkei in Berlin. Berlin: Die Ausländerbeauftragte des Senats.Google Scholar
2000 “Alevitische und musikalische Identitäten in Deutschland.” Zeitschrift für Türkeistudien 13: 213–38.Google Scholar
2003 Die Musik der imaginären Türkei: Musik und Musikleben im Kontext der Migration aus der Türkei in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler.Google Scholar
Greve, Martin, and Kaya, Ayhan 2004 “Islamic Force, Takim 34 und andere Identitätsmixturen türkischer Rapper in Berlin und Istanbul.” In Rap: More Than Words, ed. Eva Kimminich, 161–79. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Gross, Joan, McMurray, David, and Swedenburg, Ted 1992 “Rai, Rap, and Ramadan Nights: Franco-Maghribi Cultural Identities.” Middle East Report 178: 11–16, 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannerz, Ulf 1992 Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Alex G. 1995 Immigration, “Race,” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kandiyoti, Deniz, and Saktanber, Ayşe, ed. 2002 Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey. London: I. B. Tauris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaya, Ayhan 1996 “Türk diasporasinda hip-hop milliyetciliği ve ‘rap’ sanati [Hip-hop nationalism and the art of ‘rap’ in the Turkish diaspora].” Toplumbilim 4: 141–48.Google Scholar
2001 “Sicher in Kreuzberg“: Constructing Diasporas: Turkish Hip-Hop Youth in Berlin. Bielefeld: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
2002 “Aesthetics of Diaspora: Contemporary Minstrels in Turkish Berlin.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 28: 43–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klebe, Dorit 2004 “Kanak Attak in Germany: A Multiethnic Network of Youths Employing Musical Forms of Expression.” In Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities, ed. Ursula Hemetek, Gerda Lechleitner, Inna Naroditskaya, and Anna Czekanowska, 162–79. London: Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Mandel, Ruth 1990 “Shifting Centers and Emergent Identities: Turkey and Germany in the Lives of Turkish Gastarbeiter.” In Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination, ed. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, 153–71. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Manger, Leif, ed. 1999 Muslim Diversity: Local Islam in Global Contexts. Richmond: Curzon.Google Scholar
Mardin, Şerif 2002 “Playing Games with Names.” In Kandiyoti and Saktanber 2002: 115–27.Google Scholar
Markoff, Irene 1986 “The Role of Expressive Culture in the Demystification of a Secret Sect of Islam: The Case of the Alevis of Turkey.” The World of Music 28/3: 42–56.Google Scholar
1993 “Music, Saints and Ritual: Sama’ and the Alevis of Turkey.” In Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, ed. Grace Martin Smith and Carl W. Ernst, 95–110. Istanbul: The Isis Press.Google Scholar
2002 “Alevi Identity and Expressive Culture.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 6: The Middle East, ed. Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds, 793–800. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Tony 2001a “Another Root—Hip-Hop Outside the USA.” In Mitchell 2001b: 1–38.Google Scholar
2001b Ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Miyakawa, Felicia M. 2005 Five Percenter Rap: God Hop's Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Mohammadi, Ali, ed. 2002 Islam Encountering Globalization. London: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael 2002 Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neverdeen Pieterse, Jan 1997 “Travelling Islam: Mosques without Minarets.” In Öncü and Weyland 1997: 177–200.Google Scholar
Neyzi, Leyla 2002 “Embodied Elders: Space and Subjectivity in the Music of Metin-Kemal Kahraman.” Middle Eastern Studies 38: 89–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2003 “Zazaname: The Alevi Renaissance, Media and Music in the Nineties.” In P. White and Jongerden 2003: 111–24.Google Scholar
Nohl, Arnd-Michael 1999 “Breakdans ve medresse: Göçmen gençlerin çok boyutlu habitusu [Breakdance and medrese: The multidimensional habitus of migrant youth].” Toplum ve Bilim 82: 91–112.Google Scholar
Olsson, Tord, Özdalga, Elizabeth, and Raudvere, Catharina, ed. 1998 Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious and Social Perspectives. 2nd ed. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul.Google Scholar
Öncü, Ayşe 1994 “Packaging Islam: Cultural Politics on the Landscape of Turkish Commercial Television.” New Perspectives on Turkey 10: 13–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Öncü, Ayşe, and Weyland, Petra, ed. 1997 Space, Culture and Power: New Identities in Globalizing Cities. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Robins, Kevin, and Morley, David 1996 “Almanci, Yabanci.” Cultural Studies 10: 248–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saktanber, Ayşe 1997 “Formation of a Middle-class Ethos and Its Quotidian: Revitalizing Islam in Urban Turkey.” In Öncü and Weyland 1997: 140–56.Google Scholar
2002 “'We Pray Like You Have Fun': New Islamic Youth in Turkey Between Intellectualism and Popular Culture.” In Kandiyoti and Saktanber 2002: 254–76. London: I.B. Tauris.Google Scholar
Seufert, Günter 1997 “Between Religion and Ethnicity: A Kurdish-Alevi Tribe in Globalizing Istanbul.” In Öncü and Weyland 1997: 157–76.Google Scholar
Shankland, David 2003 The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition. London: RoutledgeCurzon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, Mark 1993 Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Solomon, Thomas in press “'Bu vatan bizim’ ['This land is ours']: Nationalism in Turkish Rap in Diaspora and in the Homeland.” In Practicing Popular Music: Proceedings of the Twelfth Biannual IASPM Conference, July 3-7, 2003, Montréal, Quebec, ed. Geoff Stahl.Google Scholar
2005a “'Listening to Istanbul': Imagining Place in Turkish Rap Music.” Studia Musicologica Norvegica 31: 46–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2005b “'Living Underground Is Tough': Authenticity and Locality in the Hip-Hop Community in Istanbul, Turkey.” Popular Music 24: 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soysal, Levent 1999 “Projects of Culture: An Ethnographic Episode in the Life of Migrant Youth in Berlin.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
2001 “Diversity of Experience, Experience of Diversity: Turkish Migrant Youth Culture in Berlin.” Cultural Dynamics 13: 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoğlu 1997 “Changing Parameters of Citizenship and Claims-making: Organized Islam in European Public Spheres.” Theory and Society 26:509–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, Martin 1992 “Islam, the Turkish state, and Arabesk.” Popular Music 11: 213–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1996 “History, Memory and Nostalgia in Contemporary Turkish Musicology.” Music & Anthropology 1. http://www.provincia.venezia.it/levi/ma/index/number1/stokes1/st1.htm.Google Scholar
1997 “Voices and Places: History, Repetition and the Musical Imagination.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3: 673–91.Google Scholar
2000 “‘Beloved Istanbul': Realism and the Transnational Imaginary in Turkish Popular Culture. Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Walter Armbrust, 224–42. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
2002 “Afterword: Recognising the Everyday.” In Kandiyoti and Saktanber 2002: 322–38.Google Scholar
Swedenburg, Ted 1997 “Islam in the Mix: Lessons of the Five Percent.” Paper presented at the Anthropology Colloquium, University of Arkansas, 19 February 1997.Google Scholar
2001 “Islamic Hip-Hop versus Islamophobia: Aki Nawaz, Natacha Atlas, Akhenaton.” In Mitchell 2001b: 57–85.Google Scholar
Tuzak 2002 “Tuzak: Onda on.” Gezgin Yabanci 2: 40.Google Scholar
Vertovec, Steven 1998 “Young Muslims in Keighley, West Yorkshire: Cultural Identity, Context, and ‘Community'.” In Vertovec and Rogers 1998b: 87–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vertovec, Steven, and Rogers, Alisdair 1998a “Introduction.” In Vertovec and Rogers 1998b: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1998b Ed. Muslim European Youth: Reproducing Ethnicity, Religion, Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
White, Jenny B. 1999 “Islamic Chic.” In Istanbul between the Global and the Local, ed. Çağlar Keyder, 77–91. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
White, Paul J. 2003 “The Debate on the Identity of ‘Alevi Kurds.'” In P. White and Jongerden 2003: 17–29.Google Scholar
White, Paul J., and Jongerden, Joost, ed. 2003 Turkey's Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yalçin-Heckmann, Lale 1998 “Growing Up as a Muslim in Germany: Religious Socialization among Turkish Migrant Families.” In Vertovec and Rogers 1998b: 167–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Discography [All titles are Turkish pressings, unless otherwise noted.]

Bovdead-R, 1999 “Kosova Drami.” Kosova Drami. Modem Müzik. Cassette.Google Scholar
Orhanca 1998 Sert Müslümanlar. Umut Plak ve Kasetçilik. Compact disc and cassette.Google Scholar
R.A.K. Sabotaj n.d. “Gerçek Ritm,” “Sinav Hayati,” “2000 Intro.” [Underground songs distributed on the Internet beginning c. 2001.]Google Scholar
2001 “Keskin Sirke.” HipHop Menü [compilation album]. Zihni Müzik. Cassette.Google Scholar
Müslümanlar, Sert 2000a “Bosna,” “Solingen.” “Allahu Ekber Bizlere Güç Ver.” Ay Yildiz Yikilmayacak. At-Ek Müzik Yapim. Cassette.Google Scholar
2000b Dönelim Vatana. At-Ek Müzik Yapim. Cassette.Google Scholar
2004 Best of Sert Müslümanlar 2004. Özdiyar Music. Nürnberg. Compact disc.Google Scholar