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In this revelatory study of Muslim youth movements that have emerged in cities around the world in the years since 9/11 and in the wake of the Arab Spring, Aidi illuminates the unexpected connections between urban marginality, music, and political mobilization. By examining both secular and religiously-fueled movements as a means of protest against the policies of the "War on Terror," he explains how certain kinds of music—particularly hip hop, but also jazz, Gnawa, Andalusian, Judeo-Arabic, Latin, and others—have come to represent a heightened racial identity and a Muslim consciousness that crisscrosses the globe.
Hisham Aidi is a lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He was a George Soros OSI Fellow, a Carnegie Scholar, and co-editor of Black Routes to Islam with Manning Marable. He has been a columnist for Al Jazeera and also wrote for Africana.com based at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. He lives in New York.
Safa Samiezade'-Yazd currently edits the Arts and Culture and Music sections for Aslan Media, an online media source on the Middle East and its global diaspora communities. She has blogged for Care2's Causes and News Network, where she was recognized for her cultural reporting on the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square. Her writings on resistance art within Middle East conflict and periphery cultures can be found online at Art21 and Reorient Magazine, as well as Deutsche Welle's upcoming anthology Sitting on the Fence: The Role of Media and Conflict. She lives in Denver, Colorado.
