| dbp:text
|
- the band has been identified as being part of a genre called "taqwacore", but they now actively reject that association, as it not only limits them, but also, taqwacore has caused a racist, islamophobic and sensationalist media frenzy. it has also been wrongly reported that the inspiration behind secret trial five are the writings of michael muhammad knight: which is false (en)
- I stopped trying to define Punk around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren't so far removed as you'd think. Both began in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality but seem to have lost something along the way—the energy, perhaps, that comes with knowing the world has never seen such positive force and fury and never would again. Both have suffered from sell-outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion had crippled their creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing can be further from the truth. (en)
- Our relationship with the taqwacore thing has been fairly unsteady. While we did participate in a lot of the media surrounding it, we didn't start out as a "taqwacore" band, because the project was already underway before I even had any idea that such a thing existed. We were hesitant to use the term, and reluctantly accepted it later on, only to be disillusioned again. (en)
- Anyway, initially, "raicore" was a term that I came up with for Al-Thawra's music and put on our first Myspace page back in 2006, because I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. Rai seemed like a natural place for this music to exist, because it was born from similar social phenomena. Our music is something that is of diaspora, with a mentality, identity crisis/allegiance, and musical texture that is caught somewhere between East and West and really belonging to neither. In some ways, Rai and early Chaabi, folk music from Wahran was very influential to me, because it was true people's music. It came from the ports, from the marginalized elements of society in a multicultural city, it spoke of socially taboo subjects. In a sense it was real rebel music. I was very influenced by that and, as delusional as this may sound, is something that I hope to speak to when I started out on this project. (en)
|