AP/Yahoo
Muslim-Hindu punk rock bands part of new movement
By RUSSELL CONTRERAS, Associated Press Writer Russell Contreras, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago
WAYLAND, Mass. – Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement — cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings — 25-year-old Arjun Ray is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.
For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani-American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, The Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, "Choli Ke Peeche" (Behind the Blouse).
"Yeah," said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band's guitarists, "there are a lot of contradictions going on here."
Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, The Kominas have helped launched a small, but growing, South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants and drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is "haraam," or forbidden.
The movement, an anti-establishment subculture borne of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and a hot topic on social-networking sites.
The artists say they are just trying to reconcile issues such as life in America, women's rights and homosexuality with Islam and old East vs. West cultural clashes.
"This is one way to deal with my identity as an Arab-American," said Marwan Kamel, the 24-year-old lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. "With this music, I can express this confusion."
The movement's birth is often credited to the novel "The Taqwacore," by Michael Muhammad Knight, a Rochester, N.Y.-raised writer who converted to Islam.
Knight coined the book's title from the Arabic word "Taqwa," which means piety or God-fearing, and the word hardcore. The 2003 book portrayed an imagined world of living-on-the-edge Muslim punk rockers and influenced real-life South Asians to form their own bands.
South Asian and Middle Eastern punk bands soon were popping up across America and communicating with each other via MySpace.
At the time of book's release, Basim Usmani and Khan already were experimenting with punk and building the foundation for The Kominas, which loosely means "scoundrels" in various South Asian languages. When Usmani, now 26, came across the book, he was writing songs and sporting a mohawk — just like the punk rocker on the novel's cover.
Usmani contacted Knight, who agreed to buy a bus on eBay for $2,000 to help launch the nation's first "Muslim punk rock tour" in 2007. Kamel, the son of a Syrian father and Polish mother, bought a one-way ticket to Boston to join the tour, and Canadian drag-queen singer Sena Hussain met up with them along the way.
The musicians performed at various venues but were notably kicked off stage during an open mic performance at the Islamic Society of North America convention in Chicago. Traditional Muslims at the convention decried the electric guitar-based music as un-Islamic while others were upset a woman dared sing on stage. The episode was documented by Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Omar Majeed in his new documentary "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam."
"These guys are not prophetizing or preaching anything specific about Islam," said Majeed, whose film is set for release in the United States in 2010. "They just happen to be young and Muslim, and they write songs and do art that expresses that idea."
Imam Talal Eid, executive director of the Islamic Institute of Boston, said some traditional Muslims may object to such music because they focus on its sexual attraction rather than its use for spiritual enjoyment. "But I think we can come up with a moderate opinion that distinguished what is forbidden from what is not," said Eid. "It's a new issue among Muslims."
The musical style of each group varies. Some songs on The Kominas' album "Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay" lean toward the humorous and ironic, including "Suicide Bomb the Gap." In their song "Sharia Law in the USA," the lyrics mock the portrayal of Islamists: "I am an Islamist/I am the anti-Christ/most squares can't make a most-wanted list/but my-my how I stay in style." Their sound mixes hard-edged punk, ska and funk.
Meanwhile, Al-Thawra sings about political events in the Middle East with songs like "Gaza: Choking on the Smoke of Dreams." Their music is closer to heavy metal.
Other bands include the Washington, D.C.-based Sarmust and the Texas group Vote Hezbollah.
Like most punk groups, bands produce their own albums and sell them at shows and online.
.....
The groups have toured since that first Taqwacore trip, playing in small clubs, in basements at parties and in Hispanic cultural centers. Typically, The Kominas and Al-Thawra say they play in front of 50 to 80 people.
The bands have noticed Latino punks getting into their music. Al-Thawra recently picked up a guitarist from Mexico City named Mario Salazar. The cover of Al-Thawra's next album will feature the image of the U.S.-Mexico border fused with the Palestinian-Israeli wall.
Alan Waters, an anthropology professor at University of Massachusetts-Boston, said it should come as no surprise that young Muslim and Hindu immigrants are expressing themselves through rock or that their music would strike a chord with other "disenfranchised" populations in the U.S., such as Latinos and other children of recent immigrants.
"If they're touching or singing about identity, it's going to make a connection," said Waters. "Punk rock is very American, and this is assimilation through a back door."
He called the bands "a good opportunity for stereotype-smashing."
The Kominas, who sing mostly in English, now are trying to break the image they are just a "Muslim punk band," especially since one of their founders, Ray, is Hindu. On their next album, Ray said the band will have songs in Hindi.
.....
Usmani said he grew up as a "nonreligious" Muslim-American so his journey into punk caused few problems, although he admits his family doesn't like the drinking and smoking that pervade the music scene. Khan and Kominas drummer Imran Malik, 25, also said they aren't as observant as their families might like.
"I mean, if you put a sword to us," said Usmani, "one of us might pray."
.....
Read the full story and related links HERE.
Showing posts with label immigrant/migration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigrant/migration. Show all posts
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore (Migra Corridos)
SD UT/WaPo
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore
By Ashley Surdin
THE WASHINGTON POST
2:00 a.m. March 17, 2009
SAMPLE SONG LYRICS
“Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying.
“Because it's better to keep your life than ending up dead.”
– “Veinte Años” (“20 Years”)
WASHINGTON – To its arsenal of agents, fences and stealthy sensors skirting the nation's southern border, the U.S. Border Patrol may soon add another weapon in the fight against illegal immigration: a follow-up album.
Yes, as in CD. With singers, guitars, accordions.
In what may be among the lesser-known deterrents exercised by the nation's security forces, the Border Patrol is deploying up-tempo Mexican folk songs about tragic border crossings to dissuade would-be illegal immigrants. The agency has paid – how much, it won't say – a Washington-based advertising company to write, record and distribute an album, “Migra Corridos,” to radio stations in Mexico. Its title is intended to mean “songs of the immigrant,” but migras is commonly understood as a code word for Border Patrol in much of Mexico.
The first CD of five songs was recorded in 2006 and distributed over the past two years. Another CD is scheduled to be ready by May. There are also plans for a collection of similarly themed songs with musical styles geared toward would-be illegal immigrants from Central America.
Many stations in Mexico that play the songs and the listeners who request them are seemingly oblivious to who is behind the bouncy ballads of death, dashed dreams and futile attempts at manhood.
“It's pretty slick,” said Jason Ciliberti, a spokesman with the Border Patrol in Washington.
The music is part of the Border Safety Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's push to squash smuggling. The Border Patrol launched “No Más Cruces en la Frontera,” a campaign aimed at educating communities with potential illegal immigrants about the dangers of crossing.
Illegal immigrants can encounter severe hazards on their journey: professional smugglers and bandits who beat, rob, rape and abandon them; bitingly cold or scorching temperatures; snakes, scorpions; drowning; and death by dehydration or exhaustion.
The slogan, which means both “no more crossings on the border” and “no more crosses on the border,” has relied on newspaper, TV and billboard ads.
The most recent twist on the media blitz is “Migra Corridos,” a brainchild of Elevación, an advertising firm that specializes in targeting the Latino market. Elevación, which had been working on the border campaign, sold the Border Patrol on the idea of songs-as-deterrents.
The five-song album draws on corridos, popular Mexican narrative ballads with roots in Spain's Middle Ages. Re-energized in recent decades by such popular Mexican groups as Los Tigres del Norte, the genre reverberates deeply with Mexican and Mexican-American communities, said Martha Chew Sanchez, the author of “Corridos in Migrant Memory” and professor at St. Lawrence University in New York.
The songs, Sanchez said, humanize the experiences of those communities with tales of love, death, migration, globalization and social and political events. More recently, there has been an explosion in the popularity of narcocorridos – ballads that recount the drug traders, their violent exploits and, often, their deaths.
Among the perils mentioned on “Migra Corridos”: a cousin who dies of dehydration, a mother who is raped and beaten by a child-killing smuggler, one man's suffocation in an airtight tractor-trailer.
“He put me in a trailer
“There I shared my sorrows
“With 40 illegals
“They never told me
“That this was a trip to hell.
– “El Respeto” (“Respect”)
Whatever the subject, the songs can connect with listeners, as long as they tell a compelling narrative, Sanchez said.
“Migra Corridos” lives up to its dance-inducing predecessors, despite its somber stories. The music is peppy, even cheerful.
The songs were distributed to six Mexican states, where, according to Elevación's research, many migrants left for the border: Zacatecas, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco and Chiapas. Elevación contacted stations and asked them to play the songs as part of the border initiative.
“When we approached the Mexican media, we approach it as a humanitarian campaign,” said Pablo Izquierdo, vice president of Elevación. “We didn't tell them who was behind it because consumer research indicated that it wasn't going to be as well-received.”
But, Izquierdo said, there's nothing fake about the songs. “It's all heartfelt, and it's all from the point of view of the people.”
Izquierdo said feedback from the stations was positive and that even though the CDs were not for sale, listeners started requesting the songs.
It is difficult to measure how effective the corridos have been in aiding the government's effort, but the Border Patrol's Ciliberti cited a steady decline in deaths and rescues along the southern border, attributing it to the agency's broader approach to illegal immigration. According to Ciliberti, 492 people died along the southern border in 2005. Last year, 390 deaths were recorded. In 2005, the Border Patrol assisted 2,550 people in distress in that same area. Last year, 1,263 were rescued.
“There's no mention of being punitive in any of these corridos. These are simply about the dangers,” he said.
Border Patrol requests Mexican music encore
By Ashley Surdin
THE WASHINGTON POST
2:00 a.m. March 17, 2009
SAMPLE SONG LYRICS
“Before you cross the border, remember that you can be just as much a man by chickening out and staying.
“Because it's better to keep your life than ending up dead.”
– “Veinte Años” (“20 Years”)
WASHINGTON – To its arsenal of agents, fences and stealthy sensors skirting the nation's southern border, the U.S. Border Patrol may soon add another weapon in the fight against illegal immigration: a follow-up album.
Yes, as in CD. With singers, guitars, accordions.
In what may be among the lesser-known deterrents exercised by the nation's security forces, the Border Patrol is deploying up-tempo Mexican folk songs about tragic border crossings to dissuade would-be illegal immigrants. The agency has paid – how much, it won't say – a Washington-based advertising company to write, record and distribute an album, “Migra Corridos,” to radio stations in Mexico. Its title is intended to mean “songs of the immigrant,” but migras is commonly understood as a code word for Border Patrol in much of Mexico.
The first CD of five songs was recorded in 2006 and distributed over the past two years. Another CD is scheduled to be ready by May. There are also plans for a collection of similarly themed songs with musical styles geared toward would-be illegal immigrants from Central America.
Many stations in Mexico that play the songs and the listeners who request them are seemingly oblivious to who is behind the bouncy ballads of death, dashed dreams and futile attempts at manhood.
“It's pretty slick,” said Jason Ciliberti, a spokesman with the Border Patrol in Washington.
The music is part of the Border Safety Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's push to squash smuggling. The Border Patrol launched “No Más Cruces en la Frontera,” a campaign aimed at educating communities with potential illegal immigrants about the dangers of crossing.
Illegal immigrants can encounter severe hazards on their journey: professional smugglers and bandits who beat, rob, rape and abandon them; bitingly cold or scorching temperatures; snakes, scorpions; drowning; and death by dehydration or exhaustion.
The slogan, which means both “no more crossings on the border” and “no more crosses on the border,” has relied on newspaper, TV and billboard ads.
The most recent twist on the media blitz is “Migra Corridos,” a brainchild of Elevación, an advertising firm that specializes in targeting the Latino market. Elevación, which had been working on the border campaign, sold the Border Patrol on the idea of songs-as-deterrents.
The five-song album draws on corridos, popular Mexican narrative ballads with roots in Spain's Middle Ages. Re-energized in recent decades by such popular Mexican groups as Los Tigres del Norte, the genre reverberates deeply with Mexican and Mexican-American communities, said Martha Chew Sanchez, the author of “Corridos in Migrant Memory” and professor at St. Lawrence University in New York.
The songs, Sanchez said, humanize the experiences of those communities with tales of love, death, migration, globalization and social and political events. More recently, there has been an explosion in the popularity of narcocorridos – ballads that recount the drug traders, their violent exploits and, often, their deaths.
Among the perils mentioned on “Migra Corridos”: a cousin who dies of dehydration, a mother who is raped and beaten by a child-killing smuggler, one man's suffocation in an airtight tractor-trailer.
“He put me in a trailer
“There I shared my sorrows
“With 40 illegals
“They never told me
“That this was a trip to hell.
– “El Respeto” (“Respect”)
Whatever the subject, the songs can connect with listeners, as long as they tell a compelling narrative, Sanchez said.
“Migra Corridos” lives up to its dance-inducing predecessors, despite its somber stories. The music is peppy, even cheerful.
The songs were distributed to six Mexican states, where, according to Elevación's research, many migrants left for the border: Zacatecas, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Jalisco and Chiapas. Elevación contacted stations and asked them to play the songs as part of the border initiative.
“When we approached the Mexican media, we approach it as a humanitarian campaign,” said Pablo Izquierdo, vice president of Elevación. “We didn't tell them who was behind it because consumer research indicated that it wasn't going to be as well-received.”
But, Izquierdo said, there's nothing fake about the songs. “It's all heartfelt, and it's all from the point of view of the people.”
Izquierdo said feedback from the stations was positive and that even though the CDs were not for sale, listeners started requesting the songs.
It is difficult to measure how effective the corridos have been in aiding the government's effort, but the Border Patrol's Ciliberti cited a steady decline in deaths and rescues along the southern border, attributing it to the agency's broader approach to illegal immigration. According to Ciliberti, 492 people died along the southern border in 2005. Last year, 390 deaths were recorded. In 2005, the Border Patrol assisted 2,550 people in distress in that same area. Last year, 1,263 were rescued.
“There's no mention of being punitive in any of these corridos. These are simply about the dangers,” he said.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Cuban Reggaeton star Elvis Manuel feared dead
Telemundo and MSNBC
Reggaeton star Elvis Manuel feared dead
Mother returned to Cuba after 17 seek to escape island in skimpy raft
Telemundo and MSNBC.com
updated 11:45 a.m. PT, Mon., April. 14, 2008
MIAMI - The anti-Castro reggaeton star Elvis Manuel was missing and feared dead Monday, a week after he and 16 other refugees sought to flee the Communist island on a raft, family members and refugee advocates said.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued Irioska María Nodarse, Elvis Manuel’s mother, who manages his musical group, and 13 other people in the Florida Straits on Wednesday, two weeks after they left Pinar Del Rio seeking to make the passage to Florida. Five others, including Elvis Manuel, 19, one of Cuba’s biggest musical stars, could not be found and were presumed dead after rescue efforts were called off over the weekend.
Twelve of the 14 survivors, including Irioska María Nodarse, were returned to Cuba on Saturday; the two others, believed to have been the group’s U.S.-based smugglers, were in custody.
Two other musicians, Carlos Rojas Hernandez, who performs as DJ Carlitos, and Alejandro Rodriguez Lopez, known as DJ Jerry, were also reported to have been on the raft. It was not clear Monday whether they were among the repatriated survivors.
Last week, after it became known that Elvis Manuel was missing, dozens of Cuban-Americans held vigils in Miami, and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., called on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration officials not to repatriate the rescued refugees.
‘Obviously, they’ve been repressed’
Besides expressing concern for Elvis Manuel, Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Cuban advocacy group Democracy Movement, said he feared for the safety of the 14 who were repatriated.
“The Cuban government has indeed gone into a concert that Elvis Manuel was conducting and ended the concert with tear gas and other kinds of proceedings, so obviously they’ve been repressed," Sanchez said.
Music producers and executives involved in reggaeton, an infectious Latin-flavored fusion of reggae, dancehall, hip hop and electronica, said Elvis Manuel could expect to launch a lucrative career if he made it to the United States. His recent singles “La Tuba” and “La Mulata” both became hits on U.S.-based music-streaming and video sites, even though he has never performed in this country.
In a posting on his MySpace page, Elvis Manuel said shortly before he left that he had been approached by several U.S. record producers eager to work with him. But in a recent interview, he frequently expressed frustration with his confinement to Cuba, having been quoted as complaining, “My music is everywhere, but I don’t have a cent to buy something to eat.”
Javier “Voltaje” Fernández, owner of Metamorphosis Music and Production, who worked with Elvis Manuel on his recent single “Esa Mujer,” described the singer as a “simple, kind person” devoted to his mother.
“Everything he does is for her, and his biggest hope is to get her out one day,” Fernández told The Miami Herald.
Hundreds of fans had left messages of concern and sorrow on Elvis Manuel’s MySpace page Monday.
“We are asking God that you are well,” wrote one fan. “I have faith that you are well and that you will achieve what want in Miami.”
“The love of all Cubans is with you,” wrote another. “We support you until the last moment and we ask God that you are here soon.”
Alex Johnson of msnbc.com, Telemundo affiliate WSCV-TV of Miami and NBC affiliate WTVJ of Miami contributed to this report.
Reggaeton star Elvis Manuel feared dead
Mother returned to Cuba after 17 seek to escape island in skimpy raft
Telemundo and MSNBC.com
updated 11:45 a.m. PT, Mon., April. 14, 2008
MIAMI - The anti-Castro reggaeton star Elvis Manuel was missing and feared dead Monday, a week after he and 16 other refugees sought to flee the Communist island on a raft, family members and refugee advocates said.
The U.S. Coast Guard rescued Irioska María Nodarse, Elvis Manuel’s mother, who manages his musical group, and 13 other people in the Florida Straits on Wednesday, two weeks after they left Pinar Del Rio seeking to make the passage to Florida. Five others, including Elvis Manuel, 19, one of Cuba’s biggest musical stars, could not be found and were presumed dead after rescue efforts were called off over the weekend.
Twelve of the 14 survivors, including Irioska María Nodarse, were returned to Cuba on Saturday; the two others, believed to have been the group’s U.S.-based smugglers, were in custody.
Two other musicians, Carlos Rojas Hernandez, who performs as DJ Carlitos, and Alejandro Rodriguez Lopez, known as DJ Jerry, were also reported to have been on the raft. It was not clear Monday whether they were among the repatriated survivors.
Last week, after it became known that Elvis Manuel was missing, dozens of Cuban-Americans held vigils in Miami, and Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., called on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration officials not to repatriate the rescued refugees.
‘Obviously, they’ve been repressed’
Besides expressing concern for Elvis Manuel, Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Cuban advocacy group Democracy Movement, said he feared for the safety of the 14 who were repatriated.
“The Cuban government has indeed gone into a concert that Elvis Manuel was conducting and ended the concert with tear gas and other kinds of proceedings, so obviously they’ve been repressed," Sanchez said.
Music producers and executives involved in reggaeton, an infectious Latin-flavored fusion of reggae, dancehall, hip hop and electronica, said Elvis Manuel could expect to launch a lucrative career if he made it to the United States. His recent singles “La Tuba” and “La Mulata” both became hits on U.S.-based music-streaming and video sites, even though he has never performed in this country.
In a posting on his MySpace page, Elvis Manuel said shortly before he left that he had been approached by several U.S. record producers eager to work with him. But in a recent interview, he frequently expressed frustration with his confinement to Cuba, having been quoted as complaining, “My music is everywhere, but I don’t have a cent to buy something to eat.”
Javier “Voltaje” Fernández, owner of Metamorphosis Music and Production, who worked with Elvis Manuel on his recent single “Esa Mujer,” described the singer as a “simple, kind person” devoted to his mother.
“Everything he does is for her, and his biggest hope is to get her out one day,” Fernández told The Miami Herald.
Hundreds of fans had left messages of concern and sorrow on Elvis Manuel’s MySpace page Monday.
“We are asking God that you are well,” wrote one fan. “I have faith that you are well and that you will achieve what want in Miami.”
“The love of all Cubans is with you,” wrote another. “We support you until the last moment and we ask God that you are here soon.”
Alex Johnson of msnbc.com, Telemundo affiliate WSCV-TV of Miami and NBC affiliate WTVJ of Miami contributed to this report.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Sculpture: A Mexican Town's Clay 'Residents'
A Mexican Town's Clay 'Residents'
Washington Post
By Jose Maria Alvarez
Associated Press
Monday, August 6, 2007; C03
TEOCOCUILCO, Mexico -- For decades, Alejandro Santiago's picturesque home town in southern Mexico has said goodbye to its youth as they left to seek work in the United States. Now the Oaxacan artist is trying to repopulate his town, at least metaphorically.
With a $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Santiago has undertaken an ambitious plan to create an army of life-size clay figures.
So far, he has created some 1,500 statues, each about 4 feet 4 inches and 150 pounds, to represent the youth who have abandoned this hamlet in impoverished Oaxaca state. No two sculptures are alike, he said, and many of the faces have been sculpted to reflect the hardship of migrants' lives in both Mexico and the United States.
Santiago said the inspiration for the project came six years ago, when he returned home after a three-year stay in Paris and was struck by Teococuilco's empty streets.
Low wages and an inadequate number of jobs drive thousands of Mexicans to migrate every year to the United States, turning rural communities like Teococuilco into near ghost towns.
"Where are my friends, my relatives?" he asked the town's remaining residents, mostly young children and the elderly. "They are all in the United States? I kept asking and asking. Night fell and not one soul came to visit me.
"I didn't know how many to make at first, but I knew I had to repopulate the town," he said.
In 2003, Santiago decided to experience for himself what it's like to cross the U.S. border illegally. He bought a bus ticket to Tijuana, met a smuggler who set him up with fake papers and tried to cross.
In Tijuana, Santiago passed by thousands of crosses on the corrugated wall marking the border, placed there by activists to represent those who have died trying to cross. He was quickly caught by U.S. immigration authorities and returned to Mexico, but that image burned into his brain.
He estimated those crosses numbered about 2,500 and settled on that number, plus one, for his project. He says the extra figure symbolizes that there is always one more person who is leaving, risking his or her life to reach the United States.
The Rockefeller Foundation grant is helping him complete all 2,501 statues and pay his crew of 35 workers. He expects to finish the collection by the end of this month.
The sculptures will then make a journey of their own, traveling to the northern city of Monterrey for their first exhibition in September. Santiago hopes to show them later in the United States and then bring them home to be installed on Teococuilco's empty streets.
When that happens, the artist said, he'll have a party.
"We will be celebrating the migrants' return," Santiago said.
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