The Kominas
Even though we generally oppose any further attempts to create new musical genres by appending the suffix "-core" to unlikely words and also recoil a bit every time another group of weenies with latent evangelical sides land a sappy acoustic pop-rock song on a teen drama, this looks awesome. Staggeringly so, even, like show-up-early-and-wait-in-a-line-stretching-around-the-block-even-though-it's-at-the-Bridge cool. Taqwacore, or Muslim punk rock, has its roots in a 2003 work of fiction in which a disillusioned American convert imagined the ways in which youthful rebellion might be reconciled with religious tradition; it included a poem called "Muhammed Was A Punk Rocker." (Related: was Jesus a gangsta? Anybody know?)
Here, you get four such bands: Prop Anon is hip-hop oriented, while Obelisk is a bit spacier, and Sarmust leader Omar Waqar fronts his punk band on a sitar and is, according to the press release, "determined to disembowel Ravi Shankar with a chipped cooking spoon." (While we're on the subject, in the interest of cultural sensitivity and all that, it seemed at first as though it might have been a bad idea to start that with a line like "embarking west on a three week tour to bring decimation along the I-80 interstate," but then we got the joke when they beat us over the head with gems like "The Kominas unload ammunition much faster than any Taliban. Like an unmanned predator drone, the group is known for providing quick blasts of bhangra infused hardcore and rap to incur maximum colateral [sic] damage.")
Regarding headliners The Kominas, take it away, Rolling Stone:
The bands, which hail from Chicago, San Antonio, Boston and Washington, D.C., share left-of-center politics and an antipathy toward the president. And all have used punk as a means to express the anger, confusion and pride in being young and Muslim in post-9/11 America. Twenty-four hours after leaving the Toledo mosque, Boston's Kominas – Punjabi for "the Bastards" – are playing in a packed basement in a rundown corner of Chicago's Logan Square. Local punks mix with curious young Muslims – including a few girls wearing head scarves – as Kominas frontman Shahjehan Khan launches into the opening lines of "Sharia Law in the U.S.A.": "I am an Islamist!/And I am an anti-Christ!" Nearby, mohawked bassist Basim Usmani – whose T-shirt reads frisk me i'm muslim – slaps out the song's bass line while viciously slam-dancing with a dude in a woman's burqa.
The Kominas - Sharia Law In The USA
The Kominas - Par Desi
Kirtan-playing In Tenebris alum Jdavyd Williams kicks things off with a 20-minute quickie; different religion, but hey, whatever.
Jdavyd Williams - Govinda Jaya
Jdavyd Williams - Hare Ram (Jay Jay Hanuman)
Jdavyd Williams - Ma Durga
Jdavyd Williams - Nataraja
