Heavy Metal Islam by Mark Levine Read Free Book Online Page B

in the early 1980s. The number of practitioners is constantly growing. The local cultural or municipal organizations, who were quite good at turning hip-hop projects down, are now very keen on anything urban (thanks to the work of Boulevard des jeunes musiciens mainly). Even advertisers are recognizing its importance, and clubs are promising to start having hip-hop shows.”
    Whereas in the Occupied Territories, Hamas supporters have physically attacked rappers and their fans, in Morocco rappers have escaped the persecution by religious forces that has bedeviled their rocker comrades. Perhaps that’s because rappers have focused on hip-hop’s roots as political and especially social commentary, which in the United States have been all but buried under two decades of bling. According to one rapper (who asked that I not use his name), “The hip-hop spirit is not seen as an agnostic or atheistic one, and the fact that Morocco is a Muslim country has meant that MCs will generally avoid cursing or describing girls with negative words. Nor will they make the apology of guns, cars, and bling-bling, simply because that stuff doesn’t reflect Morocco’s reality.”
    This is not to say that all rap in Morocco is politically and culturally correct. Many rap artists, like the Mekness-based group H-Kayne, can be explicitly political. But there are also groups like Camelkos, who are content to copy the form and language of gangsta rap, with lyrics such as “Yo nigga, this is my life” and other stereotypical gangsta language, while avoiding the substantive critique of their society that made the genre so powerful and threatening in the United States.
    What the best rappers are trying to create, however, is a kind of “hip-hop madrasa,” what pioneering American rapper KRS-One calls a “temple of hip-hop”—a kind of public sphere for educating their young audience about the realities of the world in which they live. H-Kayne is clearly well schooled in hip-hop; its 2005 Boulevard performance blew the other bands off the stage (including the American headliner of the hip-hop day, Jah Stimuli). Mixing hard-core rap with traditional Moroccan Gnawa and other genres, H-Kayne represents hip-hop at its best.
    With both Bigg and H-Kayne you get the feeling that, in Bigg’s words, “Hip-hop isn’t mediated yet in Morocco. We don’t rap for money or nice cars, but to improve ourselves and our society.” What makes the best rappers so good is precisely their recognition of how important music is as a “strong voice” for young people’s struggles in Morocco. Yet while it’s clear most rappers share such sentiments, if rap were this overtly political, it is likely we’d be reading about a satanic rap affair. Why such a crackdown hasn’t occurred was explained to me by a young rapper performing at his first Boulevard: “The government doesn’t bother you as long as you don’t cross the lines.” That’s why most political rappers remain largely off the Mukhabarat’s radar screen.
    Morocco’s Riot Grrrls: Caught Between Algeria and Iran?
    One of the most talked-about performances of the Boulevard’s eight-year history was that of the Moroccan hard-core metal band Mystik Moods. What made the band and their performance so special was not the music, which was in the early stages of development. Rather it was who they were and what they stood for: a bourgeois Arab all-girl version of the Sex Pistols, whose members, all in their teens, sported a goth-trash schoolgirl fashion style and a reckless disregard for the craft of musicianship. All this somehow managed to enhance the appeal of their music.
    Certainly the band’s performance caused quite a stir; much of the crowd of mostly young men spent the first half of the show screaming and gesturing “fuck you” at the band in anger at the very idea that girls would be playing heavy metal. But the sheer determination and courage of the band members, and their willingness to give