Rapping Islam: a Comparative Study of Hip Hop Culture in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States

Rapping Islam: A Comparative Study of Hip Hop Culture in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States Author Golpushnezhad, Elham Published 2017 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2876 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/366343 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Rapping Islam: A Comparative Study of Hip Hop Culture in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States Elham Golpushnezhad BA, MA School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research Arts, Education & Law Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of philosophy 30 January 2017 1 Abstract The thesis analyses Muslim youth hip hop cultures in three countries of Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States. Hip hop and its Islamic roots have often been mentioned by African-American hip hop pioneers and the Muslim hip hoppers in Muslim countries. Hip hop often represents marginal youths’ symbolic resistance against racism, police brutality and poverty in an American context. Its marriage to Islamic ideology creates a space for further research and investigation. The hip hop prophecies of liberty, hope and success together with Islamic standards and moral values of redemption, equality and promoting virtue and preventing vice1, have shaped vibrant youth scenes in post-Suharto Indonesia (1998 onwards), post- Ben Ali’s Tunisia (2011 onwards) and the United states in the time of Obama (2009-2017). The thesis is built on data from ethnographic fieldwork that was carried out for 13 months (July 2014-august 2015) in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States. Data collection was done through interviews with 56 participants in the hip hop scene in the three countries (musicians, venue managers, home studio owners, break dancers, graffiti artists, and rappers); through participant observations at hip hop gigs, graffiti art exhibitions, and recording studios. There was also a considerable amount of data gathered from Internet Websites, rap lyrics, news articles and other similar texts. Hip hop cultures in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States are studied through the notion of “glocalization” in studying youth musical cultures (Bennett, 1999; Mitchell, 2001; Robertson, 1992). Glocalization, since the 1990s, has become a useful tool in is a moral practice )هيئة اﻷمر بالمعروف و النهي عن المنكر :Promoting virtue and preventing vice’ (Arabic‘ 1 advised by Allah in Quran (3:104) that asks all Muslims to take responsibility for each other’s actions in the society. This practice requires Muslims to prevent their friends and family members who they know from doing an act of haram (see Chapter 1) 2 studying hip hop culture beyond the boundaries of the United States, concentrating on the youth interactions with a global culture in their locales. As opposed to the theory of globalisation –as it is theorized in terms of action-interaction patterns (Robertson, 1995) – glocalization of a youth culture, in Robertson’s opinion, focuses on the locale as an aspect of globalisation phenomenon. In this sense, although the hip hop practitioners see hip hop as a global unifying culture, there are various understandings and accommodations of hip hop in different places with diverse, ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds. The thesis focuses on the ways youth accommodated hip hop culture with their local identities and concerns, and created a hybrid post-modern vernacular (see Potter, 1995). For Potter, hip hop is “an active, ongoing and highly sophisticated postmodernism” (Potter, 1995, p. 13). Potter sees hip hop as a postmodern critique of western capitalism, through the identities represented by rappers, and their embodiments of capitalism’s deep contradictions (Potter, 1995). As a political reaction to racial discriminations, Muslim youth living in diaspora (for example, France, Germany, UK, Netherlands) also use hip hop as a refuge to resist against the racial context of the countries they reside in. Anti-capitalist statements are vividly seen in the works of hip hoppers in Jakarta, Tunis and the works of Muslim hip hoppers in Detroit. Hip hop’s political history that relates its ideology with that of the Black Rights movements in the United States from the early 1900s makes this culture politically relevant to youth in Muslim countries. The resistance of youth in Indonesia and Tunisia in opposing totalitarian governments and the political and cultural influences of western (French and American) countries, are based on these Muslim hip hoppers’ understanding of hip hop culture and music as a tool to resist against the dominant power in their societies. 3 Hip hoppers in Muslim countries and in Muslim communities in diaspora, relate their political viewpoints and sociocultural critique of the society to their Islamic beliefs and values. Rapping Islam offers deeper investigations of local and/Muslim identities and globalised hip hop culture in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United Sates. It makes attempts to examine how rappers in each of these countries identify themselves in hip hop culture in relation to their Muslim identities. How do the migrant Muslim rappers in the USA perceive their activity in the hip hop world? How do the hip hop cultures of each country interact with the religious discourse of the countries? Do hip hop cultures in these three countries define an exclusive space for female rappers? How would the rappers’ practices lead them to build up hip hop careers for themselves? 4 Statement of Originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. [Signed] Elham Golpushnezhad 5 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 2 Statement of Originality ................................................................................................... 5 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. 6 A Note on Translations (Arabic and Indonesian) Used in the Text ................................. 8 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ 9 Publications Arising from the Dissertation .................................................................... 12 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 14 1.1. Background ...................................................................................................... 16 1.2. Terminology Preferences: Islamic/ Muslim; Hip hop/Rap .............................. 18 1.3. Sama or Ghena: Islam and Music .................................................................... 19 1.4. Uknighted States of Arabia: Islam, Hip hop, and Muslim Countries .............. 22 1.5. Thesis Structure ............................................................................................... 26 Chapter 2: Situating Islamic hip hop Culture in Academic Research ............................ 30 2.1. Islam and Hip hop in American Context ......................................................... 31 2.2. Islamic Hip hop in Diaspora: Muslim Hip hoppers in Germany and France .. 38 2.3. Researching Muslim Youth and Muslim Hip hop Culture .............................. 43 Chapter 3: Researching Muslim Rappers ....................................................................... 47 3.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 48 3.2. Iranian Muslimah and Hip hop Culture: My Personal Attachment to Islamic Hip hop ....................................................................................................................... 48 3.3. Ethical Dimensions of the Research ................................................................ 51 3.4. Methods of Collecting Data and Difficulties of Access to hip hoppers .......... 54 3.5. Difficulties of Accessing hip hoppers in the Fieldwork .................................. 56 3.6. Ethical Issues Relating to my Research in Indonesia, Tunisia and the United States 59 3.6.1. Partying with Aziz: Complications of Befriending Respondents ............. 62 3.6.2. The unfinished journey: accompanying suspicious rappers ..................... 63 3.6.3. With no drugs, get lost! making ethical decisions in the fieldwork ........ 65 3.7. Internet-based Research ................................................................................... 66 Chapter 4: Contemporary Indonesian hip hop Culture ................................................... 72 4.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 73 4.2. Guided Democracy .......................................................................................... 74 4.3. New Order ........................................................................................................ 75 6 4.4. Popular Music Culture and Hip hop in Indonesia ...........................................

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