A Quote by Brian Eno
I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.
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When I was growing up, hip-hop music existed as American thing. If you listened to it you were listening to an American subculture, whereas now you're just listening to pop music that everyone shares. I think that's big.
When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.
Talk to me 20 years ago and I had a complete sense of illegitimacy as an American Muslim. I felt like I wasn't authentic. But I don't understand and I don't believe or subscribe to this idea that I don't have a right to speak as a Muslim because I'm an American. Being Muslim is to accept and honor the diversity that we have in this world, culturally and physically, because that's what Islam teaches, that we are people of many tribes. I think the American Muslim experience is of a different tribe than the Saudi Muslim world, but that doesn't make us less than anyone else.
Personally I was just sick of the mimicry of American culture that was going on because it wasn't natural for us. We had grown up listening to reggae music in our communities. People were enjoying what we were doing with out music - we didn't have to work to sell it to them.
If anything I think we connect to what our parents were listening to when they were our age. I'm listening to a lot of classical and electronic music, like Aphex Twin, non-vocal music.
All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.
When I was young, we were quite strongly discouraged from listening to pop music. It was an uncomfortable thing, pop music; I think my parents felt threatened by it. They were always happy when they were listening to Mozart, so if your parents are happy, then you're happy.
Especially now, with 'Glee,' it's allowed a lot of kids to love music and performing at a young age. All ages watched 'American Idol,' but I think it was nice to be able to show kids, 'Hey, you can be here, too.'
I started listening to rap music in 2012 or something, because that was when I started becoming friends with American people, and they showed me rappers to listen to. I actually started listening to Macklemore a lot. He's the first rapper I started listening to.
I have really diverse tastes, which can be problematic sometimes, but it's good because it means I'm always listening to as much music as possible. I love listening to music, whatever genre it is.
I grew up watching American films, listening to American music, and it's a big contribution to the rest of the world. I mean, American jazz, for me, is the best thing culturally that America has produced.
We weren't raised Muslim - we were born Muslim. I didn't go to a Muslim school, but it was just the theme song. It was ambient.
In terms of exploring an identity in the country music world, what I realized very quickly was that there are people who have been performing country music since they were kids. It's very much a part of who they are; very much that jazz and blues are a part of who I am, because I grew up listening to and playing that kind of music.
In college, I didn't know whether to hang out with the black kids or the white kids, and then I found the theatre kids, and I was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matter.' We were all weird and listening to Morrissey and wearing Doc Martens so that was my tribe.
Back in high school, I didn't ever see a Muslim homecoming king or queen - there was never even anyone nominated. It just seemed for a lot of those events, Muslim kids were not being included, and it was probably our fault too - no one was going for it, but no one was trying to push us to do it, you know?
Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.
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