Children of Hindu, Muslim immigrants drawn to hard rock

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By Russell Contreras
Saturday, January 9, 2010; B02

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 -- Arjun Ray, 25, 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. It also is drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is "haraam," or forbidden. The movement, an anti-establishment subculture born of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and is a hot topic on social-networking sites.

The artists say they are 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, 24, lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. "With this music, I can express this confusion."

The movement's birth often is 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 "taqwá," which means piety or God-fearing, and the term hard core. 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 the United States and communicating with one another on MySpace.

At the time of the book's release, Khan and Basim Usmani were experimenting with punk and building the foundation for the Kominas, which loosely means "scoundrels" in various South Asian languages. When Usmani, 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 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 several venues but were kicked off stage during an open-mike 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, and others were upset that a woman dared sing on stage. The episode was documented by Pakistani Canadian filmmaker Omar Majeed in his documentary "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam."

"These guys are not prophetizing or preaching anything specific about Islam," said Majeed, whose film is scheduled for release this year in the United States. "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 might object to such music because they focus on its sexual elements 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," Eid said. "It's a new issue among Muslims."

The musical style of each group varies. Some songs on the Kominas's 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.

Al-Thawra sings about political events in the Middle East, with songs such as "Gaza: Choking on the Smoke of Dreams." Their music is closer to heavy metal.

Other bands include the District-based Sarmust and the Texas group Vote Hezbollah.

Usmani said he grew up as a "nonreligious" Muslim American, so his journey into punk caused few problems. He admits, though, that 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, one of us might pray," Usmani said. During a recent Kominas performance in a Cambridge, Mass., club, Usmani played guitar while wearing a round-topped hat known as a pakul and a traditional lungi, a cloth that South Asian men wrap around their waists. An Iraqi woman in a hijab bobbed her head to the music while others slammed-danced in front of the stage. At one point, audience members yelled jokingly that their music was forbidden and playfully threw shoes at the band -- an act that is an insult among Muslims.

The bands are doing what American kids have done for generations: forming bands and making loud music. That they are Muslim doesn't mean there's a hidden message; Vote Hezbollah goes so far as to denounce violence on its MySpace page.

Usmani said despite their obvious ironic messages, he fears that his band and others like it will keep getting "stupid questions" about subjects such as Sept. 11, 2001.

Usmani said a reporter once asked him how he felt about some Muslims being terrorists. He responded by asking her how she, as a white person, felt about the African slave trade.

"We have people asking us about [issues that have] nothing to do with chords we want to play," Usmani said. "Or how loud we want to be."