Related Papers
Article
Youssou N'dour: I Bring What I Love (2008) as a Window into the Frictions between Islam and Popular Music in Senegal
2019 •
Kamary Cam
An important body of scholarship has explored the salience of Sufism (‘mystical Islam’) in Senegal. Approaches have emphasized its social and political dimensions, while little attention has been devoted to the symbolic yet important role of Sufi-affiliated pop musicians, especially mbàllax singers, in the grassroots negotiation of faith and religious tolerance in the country. Using the documentary, Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love (US, 2008), and observation, the study examines what it calls ‘cultural friction’, here a metaphor for the transient conflicts emerging as classically oriented Sufi Muslims condemn and protest against the encroachment of “obscene” practices on religious spaces and symbols. The study approaches the film as a music documentary following N’dour during and after the making of his Grammy-winning yet controversial album released in Senegal as Sant Yalla (‘God Be Praised’, 2003) and internationally as Egypt (2004). It analyzes cultural friction as part of a Senegalese artistic modernization, but also as a contemporary phenomenon speaking to the historical role of the Wolof ‘griot’ (bard) in the peaceful appropriation of Islam. Finally, the study portrays N’dour as a pop singer whose liberal Sufi perspective on music promotes his legitimacy to perform in the Islamic religious space as well.
‘Baay is the spiritual leader of the rappers’: performing Islamic reasoning in Senegalese Sufi hip-hop
2016 •
Joseph Hill
For many, Islamic hip-hop is a contradiction. Yet many prominent rappers in Senegal have joined the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi movement and communicate religious messages through their music. Rappers have contributed significantly to the Fayḍa's rising popularity among Dakar's youth, popularizing the Fayḍa's esoteric teachings through their lyrics. Although many Muslims reject hip-hop as un-Islamic, the mainstream of Fayḍa adherents and its learned leaders have embraced rappers as legitimate spokespeople for the movement. Scholars discussing change and debate in Islam have often emphasized discursive argumentation that refers to foundational texts, or “sharīᶜa reasoning.” This article examines four other modes of religious reasoning and demonstration that Fayḍa rappers use in addition to sharīᶜa reasoning to present themselves as legitimate representatives of Islam: (1) truths that transcend texts and discursive reasoning; (2) the greater good, which may apparently contravene some prescription; (3) divine inspiration and sanction, for example through dreams and mystical experiences that reveal a rapper's mission and message; (4) and “performative apologetics,” or a demonstration of exemplary piety and knowledge such that a potentially controversial practice can be reconciled with one's religious persona. The article focuses particularly on the case of the rapper Tarek Barham. As productive as Talal Asad's widely accepted conceptualization of Islam as a “discursive tradition“ has been, this article proposes understanding Islamic truth, authority, and experience as founded not just in discourse—especially in reference to foundational texts—but in multiple complementary principles of knowing and demonstrating.
‘Rapping Islam’: The Nigérien music scene and the challenges of religious reformism
2020 •
Elodie Apard
Culture and Religion
A mystical cosmopolitanism: Sufi Hip Hop and the aesthetics of Islam in Dakar
2017 •
Joseph Hill
For many, any alliance between ‘Islam’ and ‘hip-hop’ is an unholy one, whether for bringing hip hop into Islam or vice versa. Yet many of Senegal’s prominent rappers today are committed adherents of the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi (mystical Islamic) movement who rap about religious knowledge. Even the Fayḍa’s senior, classically trained authorities tend to accept hip hop as an effective tool to promulgate religious principles and recruit new disciples. The line between rapper and Islamic preacher has become blurred, and several rappers are even formally appointed spiritual guides with their own disciples. This article attributes the success of Sufi hip-hop to aesthetic resonances between global hip-hop culture and the Fayḍa’s self-imagination as an increasingly urban and global esoteric movement. I illustrate with the persona and art of Daddy Bibson, the first and most influential Fayḍa rapper to rap about Sufi knowledge.
Religions in Contemporary Africa
Religion, media and popular culture in Africa
2019 •
Laura S Grillo
Review of Arts and Humanities
Music and Pentecostalism: The Nigerian Experience
2016 •
Funmi Odunuga
Sufi Sounds of Senegal
2019 •
Estrella Sendra
Senegalese scholar, writer and musician Felwine Sarr suggests that the African continent is shaped by the ‘delocalisation of its presence in a perpetual future’, that is, a vision of what it will be; an incomplete present. An Afrotopia possible only through a spiritual, musical revolution
Mbalax: Cosmopolitanism in Senegalese Urban Popular Music
2013 •
Timothy Mangin
Journal of Religion in Africa
The Nation Turbaned? the Construction of Nationalist Muslim Identities in Senegal
2000 •
ed van hoven
ISLAM AND THE MEDIA OF DEVOTION IN AND OUT OF SENEGAL
Beth Buggenhagen
Few devotees of the Muridiyya, a Sufi congregation that emerged in colonial Senegal at the turn of the twentieth century, have the opportunity to glimpse or touch their spiritual masters. Exalted Murid figures rarely leave their compounds in rural Tuba and access to them is restricted to high-ranking initiates such as Muslim scholars, government and business leaders. Ordinary disciples are more likely to view religious figures in the variety of media circulating in an out of Senegal. The desire for and appreciation of mediation to facilitate proper practice and proximity to the Divine distinguish Murid adepts from their Sunni counterparts. The electronic mediation of devotional practices produces feelings of nearness to spiritual leaders for disciples in Senegal and abroad. Through visual practices related to electronic media devotees receive religious merit and grace that lead to spiritual and material enrichment and create their spiritual community. Islam's New Publicity In the evenings during my fieldwork in the Senegalese capital of Dakar in the late 1990s I would often listen to a call and answer show on Radio Dunyaa. Muslim men and women would
