“Music Version” versus “Vocals-Only”: Islamic Pop Music, Aesthetics, and Ethics

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes vocals-only Islamic pop music as a musical genre and mode of production. The aim is to present and discuss this particular form in relation both to its history as an Islamic phenomenon and, more broadly, to consumer society aesthetics. The article focuses on songs from the Islamic media company Awakening and its highly successful output of Islamic pop music, sketching the genealogy of vocals-only music in Islam before analyzing the recordings of songs both in “music versions” and vocals-only. It is then argued that, in spite of its signals of nonconformist, conservative Islamic ideals, the vocals-only phenomenon is very much a part of global consumer culture, in both its aesthetic qualities and its production.

The new Islamic pop music, at times referred to as pop-nasheed,¹ has become a huge phenomenon in the last two decades. The most successful artists are global superstars or at the least national icons. This article analyzes vocals-only Islamic pop music as a musical genre and mode of production through one of the leading Islamic media companies, Awakening. In 2016, Awakening’s official YouTube channel celebrated one billion views of its video clips.² Currently, the company’s most famous star, Maher Zain, is followed by more than 26 million people on Facebook and 3.7 million on Instagram. As a comparison, Metallica is followed by 37 million people on Facebook and 4.1 million on Instagram. The vocals-only recordings are not among Awakening’s most popular songs, but are popular enough for the company to keep producing them. It should be noted that vocals-only is a large genre within contemporary Islamic pop music with stars like Zain Bhikha (South Africa) and Omar Esa (UK) and groups like Rabbani and Raihan (both from Malaysia).

This article analyzes the new vocals-only pop music phenomenon both as music production and as a genre in its historical, political, and religious context, presenting and discussing it in relation both to its identity as an Islamic phenomenon and to consumer society aesthetics and marketing strategies more broadly. The specific examples studied are from Awakening’s song catalog. First, we explain how Awakening became engaged in vocals-only recordings and proceed to trace the genealogy of the genre. Then we engage with the production of the songs. Finally, we discuss pop-nasheeds in relation to Islamic legal norms, consumer culture, and aesthetics. The questions we seek to address include the following: Why is there a market for Islamic popular music without musical instruments? How and why do producers make vocals-only tracks sound exactly like instrument tracks? How does the vocals-only phenomenon connect with broader contemporary concepts of Islamic ethics?

Awakening Begins

The UK-based singer-songwriter Sami Yusuf hit it big in 2005 when Awakening convinced the Egyptian music channel Melody Hits to broadcast his first music video, al-Mu’allim (The Teacher – i.e. Muhammad). The timing was perfect. In 2005, a process of liberalization of media laws in many Arab countries was bearing fruit, and the reach of commercially successful channels like Melody Hits had become very wide indeed (Kraidy and Khalil 58–62). Sami Yusuf became a star overnight. Educated at a music conservatoire in London, Yusuf was the company’s first music artist; in fact, he was a friend of one of the four founders of the company. Together, Yusuf and Awakening had created a future classic within Islamic popular culture: the album al-Mu’allim (2003). Although not the first in the genre, this record became the global breakthrough for a new wave of pop-nasheed; in this context, nashid (pl. anashid) is a traditional, vocals-based music genre within Islamic culture, most often a song of praise (see more below). The production of al-Mu’allim was not expensive, but it used the latest technology, thereby meeting one of the prime goals of Awakening: Islamic media that could compete with the production quality of mainstream media, whether in the field of books or records (interview with Awakening CEO Sharif Banna, 2014). Al-Mu’allim was recorded using only singing and percussion instruments, allowing the claim at the time that this was in line with the demands of Islamic theology (Awakening 25). However, considerable use was also made of digital production tools, creating a complex production that most listeners would probably be prepared to swear includes at least bass and synthesizers. Some might see a paradox in the fact that the making of vocals-only pop-nasheeds often requires intimate knowledge of how to play and record instruments such as the guitar, keyboards, and bass. We will come back to this point.

In 2005, when he became truly famous, Sami Yusuf had already recorded his second album, My Ummah (My Muslim Community) (2005), using full instrumentation and playing both the violin and the piano on the album and in accompanying videos for all to witness. However, to cater for consumers assumed to want the album and its songs but not the full instrumentation, a “percussion version” was issued the same year. In the coming years, Awakening has released some of its more popular records in two versions, often called the “music version” and “vocals-only version” or “percussion version.”³ The company introduced an iconography for this purpose. In the lower right corner of the CD cover for the “percussion version” of My Ummah, one finds a small stylized drum, indicating that no unacceptable instruments are used in the production. Accordingly, later editions of the original CD were labeled with a stylized keyboard to indicate that they employed the full range of instruments.⁴

Tracing the Genealogy of the Vocals-Only Ideal

It is tempting to present a simplistic genealogy of vocals-only productions, merely describing Islamic pop-nasheed as a traditional genre sung without “instruments,” with the possible exception of a percussion accompaniment – in normative theological writing sometimes specified as a duff, a frame drum. Some readers may at this point observe that a drum is also a musical instrument. While this is obviously the case in general terms, percussion instruments have a special place in Islamic music theory because the duff is implicitly accepted in one of the very few hadiths (narratives about what, primarily, Muhammad said or did to explicate Islam) to address music.⁵ Since musical “instruments” in a broader sense are often considered problematic (see below), the logical terminological solution is to exclude drums from the category.

Nashid has a long history as one form of Islamic singing among others. There are anashid without connections to Islamic practices, since the Arabic word simply means song, but within the framework of this article, and especially in an English-speaking context, (pop)-nasheed most often refers to Islamic music; the term is firmly established in contemporary Islamic discourse.

The singers (al-munshidun) of traditional Islamic anashid – in Egypt, for example – have often been professional men important at Sufi rituals, at family celebrations, or at a mawlid (i.e. the celebration of the birthday of a holy person, including the Prophet Muhammad), and even in the rituals before the morning prayers. Such a munshid ideally must have “an excellent memory, clear diction, a deep feeling for poetry, and the ability to express this feeling vocally” (Frishkopf 167). The munshid is expected to improvise and therefore to master traditional scales (maqamat) and have a broad knowledge of poetry. The most appreciated skill is the ability to instill energy and a sense of uniqueness in every live performance through improvisation. Although anashid always share semantic, melodic, and structural elements, the aim of the munshid is rarely reproduction of a composition or “work” in the Western sense. As Amnon Shiloah (61–62) puts it, much vocal music from the Islamic tradition “blurs” borderlines between re-creation and creation, between composition and improvisation. During the twentieth century, anashid started to be recorded for documentation purposes but also for radio, and eventually for commercial use, but the new wave of pop-nasheed is in no self-evident way a straightforward continuation of this.

Inspired by a Foucauldian genealogical approach (Foucault; Salvatore), we argue that the contemporary pop-nasheed is a genre in its own right, drawing on both secular and religious musical traditions and shaped through the intersections of technology and aesthetics. Thus, to trace the genealogy of vocals-only pop-nasheeds, we must examine several different developments coming together in the phenomenon. One is the noninstrumental musical tradition of Islamic anashid, mentioned above, from which pop-nasheed has borrowed its name but also, to a certain extent, its lyrical content and at times even tonal expressions. Another is the Islamic discourse on music in general and popular music in particular. A third is the development of the commercial music industry and the interconnected technical development of recording and producing music in the digital realm. The fourth is the political use of music as a vehicle of protest by Islamist groups, not least Hamas and Hizbullah. The fifth and final development is Islamic countercultural reactions to the often-occurring ethos of popular music that celebrates sexuality, youth, and hedonism in lyrics, music, and music videos.

Purposeful Art

As mentioned above, traditional nashid performances have been restricted as to instruments used, the result of a discourse within Islamic fiqh, jurisprudence, that has been particularly negative about string and wind instruments. The most restrictive Islamic legal experts have limited legal tonal expressions to the call to prayer, melodic Qur’anic recitation, songs for specific occasions like family celebrations, working songs, military music, and caravan songs. Celebratory songs praising Allah and Muhammad have also been considered halal, legal. Some legal experts have further imposed restrictions on these expressions with regard to the topics of lyrics, instrumentation, and, in Qur’anic recitation, the degree of elaboration of tonal expression (al-Faruqi; Shiloah; Otterbeck, “Sunni Discourse”). The description “restrictive Islamic legal experts” is deliberately chosen to signal that there is no consensus in Islamic thought on music and other tonal expressions. In fact, music⁶ is among the issues that have raised debate throughout Islamic intellectual history and continue to do so (Alagha; Otterbeck, “Sunni Discourse”).

Vocals-only songs can be related to this continuous discourse through a development in the discussion about al-fann al-hadif (purposeful art) that started to emerge in the 1980s in both Sunni (mainly in Egypt; see Nieuwkerk, Performing Piety) and Shia circles (mainly in Iran and Lebanon; see Alagha). The chief goal expressed in the discourse was to re-evaluate art and use its powerful expressions to spread the Islamic message. Until then, art in its “new” (in Muslim social settings) manifestations (i.e. theatre, films, paintings, novels, and recorded music) was mainly associated with Westernization and the national, secular culture of Arab, Turkish, and Iranian urban elites or possibly with commercial mass culture (Armbrust; Nieuwkerk, Performing Piety; Siamdoust). The ideas of the Egyptian Sunni wasatiyya (middle way), associated with moderate Muslim Brotherhood thinkers and promoting al-fann al-hadif and al-fann al-nazif (clean art), slowly had an impact, first among local activists but eventually taking on more commercialized forms. This development was partially sponsored by Gulf financiers bringing sensitivities and demands (Nieuwkerk, Performing Piety) from the Gulf into the Egyptian art scene. Similar developments were happening in Syria, where television dramas were increasingly being sponsored by Gulf businessmen and therefore adjusted to Gulf tastes and norms (Salamandra).⁷ The discourse also spread to Malaysia, as we will see below.

The goal of al-fann al-hadif was to promote an Islamic lifestyle while using new forms of expressions. Nonetheless, musical lyrics should be decent, preferably offering praise to Allah, Muhammad, or an Islamic lifestyle; at the very least, they should avoid the indecent, hence the label “clean art.” At first the use of instruments was a sensitive issue, causing musicians to develop a style using vocals and percussion only; consequently, the concept of nashid was perfect, as it meant both “song” and, in a narrower sense, song that included religious praise while avoiding instruments (other than percussion). Still, the musical forms used departed from the traditional, performance, and improvisation-oriented nashid, rather being produced in contemporary Arab or so-called “Western”-style genres, making use of the aesthetics and technology developed in the growing commercial music industry.

The Music Industry and Consumer Culture

As we have already implied, the sound of even the “cleanest” vocals-only productions is often inspired by Western pop music instrumentation, harmony, and structure – to the point that it sometimes becomes a real challenge to actually perceive that the songs have been produced without synthesizers and bass, even if you know that to be the case. The commercial music industry has affected the form of the pop-nasheed in many ways. The expected duration and structure of a song now often follow the norms of some three to five minutes in length with the approximate structure of intro, verse, refrain, verse, refrain, bridge/interlude, and refrain to fade. The marketing of pop-nasheeds follows the general trends in covers, promotional videos and photos, stage names, and so on. Ever since the first pop-nasheed artists emerged (see below), the phenomenon has run parallel to other general developments and trends in consumer culture, either mirroring them or offering clear alternatives, not least in the presentation of the artists in promotional material such as photos and video clips. To signal the ethical Islamic agenda of the artists (and the company), blunt sexualization of the artists is strictly avoided, and instead they are portrayed as modern yet moral. This public presentation of an ethical masculinity striving to be identified as Islamic by the audience is the focus of Otterbeck’s ongoing research but will not be further dealt with here (see Otterbeck, “Sunni Discourse”, Otterbeck, “Maher Zain”).

At times, pop-nasheed incorporates mainstream music by covering hits but altering lyrics. In Egypt, Islamic orchestras contracted to play at wedding parties frequently play the most popular hits, making minor changes in the lyrics to render them sufficiently pious for the context (Nieuwkerk, “Popularizing Islam”). Some of the Awakening artists also play cover versions. For example, Raef has performed mainstream hits at live performances and sometimes in recordings, at times with changed lyrics as in his cover of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” which he turned into a song about jum’a, the Friday prayer. Such examples are interesting in and of themselves, and they deserve their own investigation; in this article, we focus mainly on the pop-nasheed repertoire.

Hamas and Hizbullah: The Music of Islamic Political Activism

Among the earliest expressions of a new take on nashid were the resistance songs and laments about fallen comrades and leaders by Hamas and Hizbullah, respectively.⁸ Mixing nationalist sentiments with Islamic morals, ethics, and praise, both organizations managed to create politically potent music labeled as nashid. From more or less haphazard beginnings stemming from initiatives by individuals in the 1980s, both organizations have developed cultural politics regarding art, not least music, and promote and even employ musicians and bands, while owning their own recording studios (Berg). Hizbullah has set up al-risalat, a cultural institution resembling a ministry of culture (Alagha). Thanks to some especially powerful songs and a few stars like Palestinian-Jordanian Mais Shalash, a girl of 12 who rose to fame with the second Intifada (2000), these anashid managed to impact more than just Sunni Palestinians and Shi’as of Lebanon. Cassette tapes with resistance anashid and laments circulated widely among Muslims but hardly reached non-Muslims (apart from some inquisitive researchers); further, they were seldom heard among Muslims outside activist circles and their radio broadcasts. The phenomenon might best be described as a globalized subculture: globalized in the sense that the songs were listened to, as we understand it, by activist Muslims in all corners of the globe (particularly among those who understood Arabic), and subculture in the sense that this was happening away from the central stages of consumer culture.

In the beginning, both organizations recorded vocals-only, relying on males singing in unison in the bass register, accompanied by handclapping often simply marking each beat of the song. McDonald (127–29) points out that Hamas needed to distance itself from Fatah’s use of Palestinian folk music, and music signaling Islamic awareness matched the profile of the organization. Hamas made use of the traditional nashid genre but made it simpler, less elaborate in the melody, more repetitive and militant. Some productions did include instruments, but always discreetly in the background (Funch). Hizbullah, on the other hand, has managed to connect its protest music to the Shi’a ethos of the Iranian revolution, positioning the martyrology of Shia theology as an inspiration and incorporating, for example, the latmiyya (lament) genre of the Ashura commemorations of the killing of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein into its political message of resistance (compare Berg). The twenty-first century has seen the introduction of instruments, and both Hamas and Hizbullah now have live bands at meetings (Berg).

Pioneers of Pop-Nasheed

In answer to the call for a contemporary Islamic music culture, to be called al-fann al-hadif, and as a countercultural reaction to global popular music, some artists started to record nasheeds with a new touch to them. The most famous pop-nasheed pioneers are Yusuf Islam from the UK, Raihan from Malaysia, Dawud Wharnsby from Canada, and Zain Bhikha from South Africa. They all issued albums in the 1990s that were vocals-only studio albums.

British singer Yusuf Islam issued his first recordings in 1995 after having buried the musical career of his alias Cat Stevens in 1979 (Larsson). It was a double CD, The Life of the Last Prophet, containing a pious rendering of the Prophet Muhammad’s life read by Yusuf Islam on CD1 and three “Nasheeds (songs)” on CD2. Two of the tracks were traditional songs arranged by Yusuf Islam, and one was a new song written by him. The tracks featured male vocals, a children’s choral group, and drumming. These are not regular pop songs; rather, the first two are popular traditional songs in Muslim circles, not least “Tala’a al-Badru ‘Alayna” (The Bright Moon Rose Over Us), arguably the most popular of Islamic songs, but at least parts of the lyrics are sung in English, itself a novelty. After his conversion to Islam, Yusuf Islam had taken a stand against music, so the return to recording caused a sensation, not least since Yusuf Islam’s characteristic and well-loved voice sounded the same as before. Soon thereafter, he was invited by the Malaysian nasheed group Raihan (see below) to sing two songs with them, “Seal of the Prophets” and “God Is the Light,” for their second album, Syukur (Gratitude) (1997). The songs feature vocals and drumming. Yusuf Islam continued to record nasheeds, prayers, and children’s songs in vocals-only style until 2005 (21 April), when he appeared with a guitar on stage in Abu Dhabi and performed. Since then he has continued to add instruments to his recordings and performances. In 2016, Yusuf Islam toured in the United States using both his new stage name (Yusuf) and his old (Cat Stevens) on posters, playing parts of his old catalog again using a full band.

Yusuf Islam’s compilation Footsteps in the Light from 2006 covers his productions from 1981 to 2004. It features what could be called al-fann al-nazif versions of some of his 1970s pop-folk songs, namely “The Wind,” “Peace Train,” and an Arabic-Zulu-English version of the monumental hit “Wild World.” These versions of Cat Stevens’ older songs are examples of a production strategy that aims to introduce existing musical material into an Islamic context, without changing it beyond recognition. In the 2006 album, the roles of traditional rock instruments are filled by hand drum and male voices in complex arrangements, so that many (if not most) harmonic, rhythmic, and structural elements from the originals have been recreated by means of technology and the elaborate use of the human voice.

Malaysian group Raihan’s first album, Puji-Pujian (Praise) (1996), became an instant hit record in Malaysia. It is claimed, by Raihan, to have sold more than 3.5 million copies, making it the best-selling Malaysian record ever. The group consisted of five men singing Islamic lyrics together in tight vocals-only arrangements with discreet percussion rhythms. Before Raihan’s fantastic success, the key members had another band called the Zikr (1992–1996), which also recorded voice-only with some degree of success. The Malaysian voice-only nasyid genre was inspired by Arab anashid of the Islamic movements in the Middle East and connected to al-Arqam, an Islamic movement in Malaysia outlawed in 1994. The pioneering group Nadamurni, establishing what Bart Barendregt has nicknamed “the Arqam sound,” issued 31 albums in 10 years before splitting up in 1995. But it was Raihan who really popularized the genre, making both vocal and percussion arrangements more complex, a move that became an influence upon others. The second album, Syukur (1997), is in the same style, but the rhythms are richer and more complex, introducing several pitched⁹ percussion instruments, often of local origin. This album also features songs in English, which increased the group’s popularity outside Southeast Asia. With Raihan’s fifth album, Demi Masa (By Time, a reference to the first verse of sura 103 of the Qur’an in Malay translation) (2001), other instruments were discreetly introduced even though the overall style did not change.¹⁰ Since then Raihan has continuously used musical instruments to an increasing degree, culminating with the fully orchestrated Ameen (Amen) (2005). It is interesting that the two songs on that album with the most elaborate Islamic theme, “99 Names” and “Ameen,” are vocals-only songs. Possibly as a reaction to the group’s increasing use of melodic instruments, they recorded a pop-nasheed album in 2008 called The Spirit of Shalawat (Songs of Praise), celebrating the values of prayer and using nothing but their voices and a little sparse drumming.

In 1993, Canadian street musician David Wharnsby converted to Islam (becoming Dawud Wharnsby-Ali but later dropping Ali). His first album after the conversion (Blue Walls and the Big Sky, 1995) was not in the pop-nasheed genre. Rather, it is a somewhat typical folk album with vocals, guitar, and pleasant harmonies by Heather Chappell, a female singer whom Wharnsby had collaborated with before. His next album, A Whisper of Peace (1996), was his first pop-nasheed album and featured songs like “Takbir (Days of Eid)” (Say “Allah Is Great” [Days of Celebration]), “Al Khaliq” (The Creator), “Animals Love Qur’an,” and “The Prophet.” It only features the voices of grown males and children and unobtrusive drumming.¹¹ The album implements several different traditional ritual tonal expressions used in Islam, including the call to prayer (in the second track, “Azan/Qad Qamatis Salah” (Call to Prayer/The Prayer Has Begun) and the pilgrimage chant “Labayka” (“Here We Come”)), combining these with a tonal language found in Irish folk songs. The same pattern was repeated over the coming years. It was not until the release of Vacuous Waxing (2004) and Out Seeing the Fields (2007), when starting to collaborate with childhood friend Bill Kocher, that Wharnsby once again recorded with other instruments than percussion. Even though the albums were not seen as pop-nasheed by the artist himself (interview, 2018), some tracks resemble his earlier nasheed compositions, not least “The War/La ilaha illallah” (There Is No God But Allah), from Out Seeing the Fields, with lyrics containing outspoken criticism of commercialism and shallowness.

South African singer Zain Bhikha’s first album, A Way of Life, was released in 1994. Since then, he has established himself as one of the foremost exponents of pop-nasheed. He has recorded or performed with the above-mentioned artists and released 11 albums, never departing from the vocals-only idea. Instead, he uses very advanced choral arrangements, drums, and even beatboxing. Like Wharnsby, he is very fond of recording songs for children. Even though Bhikha never introduces instruments other than percussion, he has, beginning with the album A Way of Life (2010, the second with that title), recorded some of his songs in two versions: a “drum version” and a vocals-only version, leaving out the percussion.

The pioneers of the new pop-nasheed genre started recording in the mid-1990s. Some started to use musical instruments on a small scale at the turn of the century, but something happened around 2003–2005 that caused three of the pioneers to record with full instrumentation in the coming years. This was the period when Sami Yusuf recorded and issued his second Awakening album in two versions. The idea of issuing a music version and a vocals-only version of the same song is fairly new, and we have not been able to establish why this change came about. In an interview with Jonas Otterbeck (2018), Dawud Wharnsby mentioned that he had discussed the introduction of the guitar and other instruments with Yusuf Islam in 2003. He had then started to record his Vacuous Waxing. As Yusuf Islam, Dawud Wharnsby, and Zain Bhikha got to know each other during a recording session in London in 1999 and have been friends since, and as they all know the band Raihan and several other actors in the genre, it is probably impossible to map down who affected whom.

Awakening Again

The above genealogy explains the backdrop to Awakening’s initiative to start producing pop-nasheeds as it did with Sami Yusuf’s first record, al-Mu’allim (2003). At the time, neither the pioneers of the genre nor the Islamist groups had introduced other tonal/pitched instruments than percussion, with the exception of Raihan. Raihan was known to Sami Yusuf and Awakening, and when Raihan toured the UK in 2003, Awakening managed to promote Sami Yusuf as an opening act even before the release of his debut. Then again, Raihan’s most famous songs were vocals-only. It was in 2005, in the production of My Ummah by Sami Yusuf, that the idea of making two versions cropped up. CEO Sharif Banna called it an experiment when Otterbeck discussed this with him in 2014, but we would like to see it as more than that. In the entrepreneurial spirit of Awakening, the two versions were made in order to cater for two Islamic ethical positions, one that considers that music must be constrained in instrumentation and one that does not. Probably, however, it is too simplistic to perceive the audience as two distinct groups of people (or markets) consistently and exclusively choosing one kind of musical material over another due to religious sensitivities.

Part of the reason for the policy might in fact be that the listener can make her own choices in situ regarding which song version – with or without instruments – she is comfortable with in a given personal or social context. Contemporary everyday Muslim life is as changing, ambivalent, and incoherent as any other, as Samuli Schielke puts it. A personal attitude towards music can change with the time of year, for instance (Skjelbo 187).¹² With that in mind, it is reasonable to see the vocals-only phenomenon very much as a consequence of modern consumerism, where self-expression often takes the form of making choices about what products to consume and when. In a world of supply and demand, it makes sense for a record label to stay somewhat neutral in any discussion of the overall permissibility of music and instead to try to deliver a suitable range of products. This involves the idea that the artist is prepared to record both with and without other instruments than percussion, assuming that the audience will accept that an artist can cater to two different preferences. The risk taken by the company is of being perceived by some parts of the potential audience of consumers as not Islamic enough. That is, the strategy of Awakening to pass as an Islamic media company might not be seen as authentic. To date, that criticism has indeed been directed at Awakening and its artists, but not, according to our knowledge, due to the richer instrumentation of most of its recordings. Rather, critique has concerned live shows and the “rock star” aura surrounding the major artists (Otterbeck, “What Is”). There is also the possibility of being perceived as excessively conservative or as sycophantically catering to Gulf tastes. Again, these accusations have been made, but not because of the strategy of making different versions (rather, because Awakening has had tremendous success in the Gulf).

A Discourse of Self-Imposed Artistic Restrictions

While much has been written about the practice of changing, deleting, or bleeping explicit¹³ lyrics in music such as rap in order to clear it of unwanted content, not much literature exists on the practice of changing or removing musical material in popular music. Furthermore, the existing literature tends to view any changing of lyrics or music for political or religious reasons as censorship, and, accordingly, as unidirectional manifestations of political power over art. Perhaps it is too often presumed, however, that self-censorship always renders the artist a victim without agency with a watered-down product (Solomon 37). Tom Solomon calls such assumptions a “victimology” approach, suggesting that a more nuanced view of self-imposed artistic restrictions is sometimes necessary. Arguably, all kinds of cultural production are subject to regulation and restrictions. As Judith Butler puts it, self-restriction (i.e. censorship) in its broadest sense is always part of meaningful speech. Furthermore, without romanticizing the working conditions of artists operating under totalitarian systems, it is an established fact that there can be a creative potential in restrictions.

In this section, we investigate some significant aspects of the vocals-only pop-nasheed phenomenon seen from a musician’s or producer’s perspective, without presupposing that we are dealing with a simple causal relation. The making of such music cannot and should not be explained as merely the result of an industry following rigid and simple theological doctrines or rules. There is more to it than that, we argue. The artists and producers behind Awakening’s “vocals-only” editions demonstrate both musical creativity and a considerable amount of artistic freedom in their work. Therefore, we see the production of vocals-only pop-nasheeds as a manifestation of complex relations between commercial interests, cultural creativity, and religious normative principles. In the following we investigate the sound structures of selected songs more deeply, in order to discuss in greater detail how a number of musical parameters work in this context. In order to do so, we use the concept of “versioning,” taking inspiration from business and marketing terminology where it covers the practice of maximizing sales by the strategic release of slightly different product designs. Versioning in that sense is arguably different from the long-established practice of remixing or covering other artists’ songs. In such cases, there is often a clearer distinction between “original” and “cover” than is the case with the vocals-only pop-nasheed phenomenon. (For a discussion of cover songs, versions, and authenticity, see Solis.)

Initially we can roughly identify two distinct types of vocals-only pop-nasheeds: one, like most of the pioneering work in the genre, that has been produced in just a single version (and so was “born” vocals-only); and another, often more interesting from our point of view, where an original recording featuring a full band has been more or less radically changed in order to earn the designation “no-music version,” “vocals-only,” or “percussion version.” To better understand the vocals-only phenomenon, it is important to discuss the relations between the versions. What has been changed and by what means? Is it even always meaningful to consider one CD the “original” and the other a “version” if they are conceived and produced more or less simultaneously, as is apparently the case with some of the albums published by Awakening?

In a rap song with explicit semantics, one can (so we postulate) alter the level of explicitness by removing or changing a few tenths of a second of sound. The F-word can easily be replaced with a bleep, for instance. It is not hard, in other words, to formally describe the difference between an original and edited version in such cases.¹⁴ This might be a crude example, but it serves to demonstrate that much cleaning of popular music in the Western music industry takes the form of simply changing or removing discrete unwanted semantic elements while leaving most of the product untouched.

In the case of Islamic pop-nasheed versioning, the producer has to be more creative. For example, he or she will have to consider what is and what is not a musical instrument in the first place. Are drums acceptable? Are pitched drums acceptable? The outcome of such considerations will have a direct effect on the musical structures of the final product. The process also requires high-level musical skills and state-of-the-art production technology. The process of creating musically meaningful vocals-only pop-nasheed is not only a job of deleting the instruments. Maher Zain casually mentioned that the vocals-only versions of his latest album, One (in Arabic and an “international version,” both from 2017) were done by a studio wiz who has specialized in making vocals-only productions. Zain was not present himself during the process (interview with Jonas Otterbeck).

In the interests of analytical clarity, here we introduce the technical term transcription. A musical transcription is usually understood as (1) any reproducible notation of a musical structure (i.e. a musical score) or (2) a faithful rendition of a work performed by another instrument than the one for which it was originally composed (the various piano transcriptions of Bach’s lute or organ works are well-known examples). Arrangement, on the other hand, is a looser concept implying the remaking of a musical work, where the resulting sound purposefully may be both structurally and sonically quite different from the original. In the following examples, we use the concepts of transcription and arrangement to analyze two different songs that can both be purchased in a “music version” as well as a vocals-only version.

Example 1 – Maher Zain: “Always Be There”

Swedish-Lebanese musician Maher Zain is an artist who mixes Arabic vocal styles with the soft sound textures of Western pop music. He has had a serious impact on the market for religious pop music in the West and in many parts of the Islamic world (Otterbeck, “Maher Zain”). The music user can choose freely between many versions of his songs.¹⁵

As an example of Awakening’s production strategy, we have chosen “Always Be There” from the album Thank You Allah, 2009 (Vocals Only Version, 2012) by Maher Zain. The song follows a simple formal scheme common to pop songs: intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-interlude-chorus-outro (fade out).

Apart from the idiomatic Arabic phrases Allahu Akbar (God is great) and Subhanallah (Glory be to God), the lyrics are in English. The central message of the song is that Allah is the constant to which humans always can turn:

So when you lose your way

To Allah you should turn

‘Cause as He promised

He will always be there

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar….

The original 2009 version of the song is produced with the full range of instruments from guitars to synths and percussion. Apart from what sounds like a darbouka (an Arab hand drum), the original sounds much like a Western pop song (see Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. Maher Zain’s album Thank You Allah as presented on Spotify in original version.

Figure 2. Maher Zain’s album Thank You Allah as presented on Spotify in Vocals-Only–No Music version.

On the vocals-only version only male voices can be heard. There are no instruments or percussion. In many other respects, the two versions are completely identical and the vocals-only version is clearly built around exactly the same lead vocal track as the original.¹⁶ And so it follows that the tempo, lead vocal melody, harmonic progressions, and form of the vocals-only version cannot be said to be different from the original; the audible difference lies in the absence of instruments in the vocals-only version. Yet the producers have done much more than just removing unwanted tracks.

Figure 3 (below) is a transcription of the intro/interlude/outro section from the vocals-only version.

Figure 3. An excerpt from “Always Be There.”

The phrases are meticulously performed by male voices in order to mirror the guitar and bass lines from the original track. The lowest voice, the bass part, is compressed and sung with a hard attack on the consonant “d,” giving the dynamic shape of the notes somewhat bass-guitar-like qualities. Notwithstanding that, it is, or so we argue, clearly audible that all musical phrases are generated by (male) voices.

The guitar and bass tracks have been transcribed to be faithfully reproduced by another “instrument.” If we take a certain type of Islamic discourse into account, this particular song is clearly meant to be considered as performed by a “noninstrument,” regardless of how close it mimics bass and guitar. In the case of this album, in other words, the versioning – the transcription – of the material is evident and can easily be understood as a message: the problematic musical instruments have been replaced by something acceptable, the male voice.

Example 2 – Mesut Kurtis: “Tabassam”

In other cases, it is much less clear what exactly has been done to the music to qualify it for the designation vocals-only. Awakening Records provides two versions of UK-based Macedonian pop-nasheed artist Mesut Kurtis’s album Tabassam (Smile) from 2014 and 2015 (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Mesut Kurtis’s 2015 vocals-only version of his album Tabassam as presented on Spotify.

The title song “Tabassam” is about how one can overcome the hardships of the world by trusting in God – and by smiling as the Prophet Muhammad did:

Send blessings upon the Prophet and smile

For the Prophet smiled and smiled

For the Prophet smiled

Allah, (send Your) blessings upon him! (Our translation from Arabic)

The form follows a conventional pop framework: intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-interlude-breakdown-chorus.

The track “Tabassam” clearly sounds different in the two versions. Here it is perhaps more precise to talk about the vocals-only version as an arrangement. On this version of the song “Tabassam” one finds no instruments apart from the minimal use of chimes. This exception makes sense, since idiophones are often considered halal (legal) even in restrictive interpretations. On the track are chords that sound very much like the synthesizer-generated textures of the original. The use of reverb and tempo-synchronized delay (echo) brings about subtle 16th notes to fill the roles of percussion instruments and rhythm guitars.¹⁷

The bass notes are so heavily compressed and filtered that it is close to impossible to discern the source of the sounds being made. They sound very much like a bass guitar or a bass synthesizer, with the attack from the consonant “d” arguably at times being the sole indicator that they are in fact the human voice.¹⁸ The playing style of the bass parts is closely reproduced. Listen, for instance, to the idiomatic arpeggios (e.g. measures three and five in Figure 5), which are reproduced impressively correctly by the male voices in the vocals-only version. We believe the producers have been trying to make the male voice sound as much like a bass as possible, and they have done that very well. Importantly, this strategy only makes sense on the condition that both producer and listener know and appreciate how “real” bass lines are supposed to sound, or when the listener simply accepts at face value the claim that the recordings are vocals-only.

Figure 5. Excerpts from the bass/vocal bass line from “Tabassam.”

The original version is heavily driven by fluctuating melodic string lines, typical of Arabic pop music. Thus, interestingly, to most listeners, the vocals-only version will probably sound less “Middle Eastern” than the original, because these strings have been removed. As in the case of “Always Be There,” the vocals-only version has, as far as we can detect, been created using exactly the same lead vocal track as the original version.¹⁹

The first example (Zain) is true to the original’s melodic and harmonic structures but sonically quite different from it due to its being audibly produced with voices only. On this recording, there has been no attempt to mask the fact that the bass is performed by singers and not by a bass player. The second example (Kurtis) is also very close to the original, but it has sonic qualities that would convince (or so we postulate) some people that it was made with recordings of “normal” instruments, at least when it comes to the bass parts. If we take the vocals-only claim seriously (as one should), the Kurtis album is an example of what can be seen as quite extensive pragmatism. It does not matter that the album sounds as if instruments are being used. What counts is apparently that no musical instruments are actually there, regardless of how much the (vocal) tracks sound like bass guitars and synthesizers. In this sense, it can be argued that, when it comes to the promise that the CD is really vocals-only, the relations between producer, music, and listener are based on trust more than anything else.

Markets, Aesthetics, and Islamic Ideals

While the vocals-only pop-nasheed phenomenon clearly relates very much to certain restrictive interpretations of Islamic ethics and theology, it is also a part of the global music industry. It is this relation that we address in this final part of the article.

We have argued that the vocals-only recordings are not traditional anashid; rather, they are the result of the music industry’s understanding of how to market and produce music, giving preference to songs that are a few minutes long, with a repeated centrally placed chorus, composed and recorded, printed on CDs, available for download, and freely available as music videos. Further, singers are marketed as idols, in photographs, in music videos, on album covers, and on stage performing live in front of paying audiences or at Islamic charities. We have laid down the main genealogy of vocals-only pop-nasheed leading up to the strategies of a commercial media company such as Awakening. We have also drawn attention to the development in Islamic (especially Islamist) theology of slowly starting to embrace and incorporate cultural expressions such as music (and theatre, movies, etc.) into strategies to remain or become relevant. The first attempts to meet such calls for purposeful or clean music were vocals-only recordings (often including percussion, but not other instruments). Instead of being completely superseded by other forms of recordings, vocals-only has become a production genre in pop-nasheed music and, as such, has a market among Muslims, both those who consider musical instruments to be at best problematic and at worst the work of the Devil (Otterbeck, “Sunni Discourse”) and also those who buy and listen to all music made by their favored artists. The artists themselves may have no problems with recording with musical instruments, yet they, and the company to which they are contracted, also issue vocals-only versions of a number of their songs or entire albums. In Sami Yusuf’s case, it followed the logic that those who started to listen to him because he did not feature instruments in his first record should not have to give up listening to him because instruments were introduced in the second album – at least according to Awakening’s CEO, Sharif Banna, who expressed this view in an interview with Otterbeck in 2014. The work of later artists who released their first album with a full band was then modified on the basis of this logic. Awakening as a company became a provider of vocals-only recordings, regardless of artist.

Due to the many vocals-only recordings made for Awakening, new demands and skills have apparently developed. In our analyses of the recordings above, we have discussed the use of cutting-edge digital production tools and a very rich palette of sounds increasingly resembling instruments. Indeed, it is only by dissecting the music using studio equipment that Skjelbo has been able to hear that the bass lines in “Tabassam,” for example, are recorded using the male voice. Since most listeners, presumably, lack such equipment, accepting recordings made with advanced technology as vocals-only must be based on trust. In fact, the issue has been addressed in online Muslim discussions, exposing a wide variety of attitudes. As might be expected, the most restrictive argue that if music sounds like it contains an instrument it is forbidden, while the more lenient claim that as long as only the voice is used, and used for the right ends, the music is allowable. An increasingly prevalent and more liberal attitude is to allow instruments, as demonstrated above.

Regardless of these squabbles, vocals-only pop-nasheed has emerged as a fascinating contemporary genre. The vocals-only ideal was necessary in the development of pop-nasheeds, but this has since become a subordinate element. In purely technical terms the limitations of the genre present some unique challenges to musicians, singers, and producers, but, importantly, such limitations also come with interesting creative potential.

Finally, it is fully possible that the vocals-only style has been instilled with a certain aura of authenticity and Islamicness that artists can use to express their sensitivity towards Islam and to express their Muslimness to their audience. There are tendencies in this direction in, for example, the recordings of Raihan (avoiding instruments when they truly address religious topics in later records), although this trend is not reflected in the Awakening recordings, which simply present two versions of songs instead. Whether one of these trends will become dominant in the future remains to be seen.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet.

Notes on contributors

Jonas Otterbeck

Jonas Otterbeck is professor of Islamic Studies at Aga Khan University - Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London, UK, and at Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University, Sweden. He has published numerous articles on different aspects of contemporary Islam in Europe and on Islam and music, for example in the journals Contemporary Islam, Numen & Ethnic and Racial Studies. This article is part of his research on the Islamic pop music and pop nashid genres soon to be a book with the working title The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music.

Johannes Frandsen Skjelbo

Johannes Frandsen Skjelbo is PhD in musicology, working at Department of Arts and cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His PhD dissertation, Musik blandt unge med muslimsk baggrund: En etnografisk undersøgelse af praksis (Music among youth with a Muslim background: An ethnographic study of Praxis (2015) was an in-depth study of the use and function of music among Danish youth with a Muslim family background. Frandsen Skjelbo is also an accomplished  pianist and producer working at Rytmisk Center (the rhythm Center) in Copenhagen.

Notes

1. A scholarly transcription of the Arabic word would be nashid (pl. anashid). At times inshad is used in Arabic. In Malay and Indonesian the genre is referred to as nasyid. In this article we will use the by far most common spelling (nasheed, in plural nasheeds) for the music we are referring to. This spelling, and the quirky English-style plural, has become the vernacular for the genre in English. We modify it further by branding it pop-nasheed. Because it has become a genre name used in English, the word is not in italics. When referring to more traditional music, we use nashid (sing.)/anashid (pl.). The Arabic word nashid is a very old generic term for song, used already in the philosopher al-Farabi’s (d. 950) work on music theory. It is at times synonymous with istihlal, a vocal prelude in free rhythm (see Guettat 447; Sawa 388). Further, the Arabic root n-sh-d carries connotations to poetry in expressions such as anshada al-shi’r (reciting/singing poetry) or nishida (a type of poem) (see also Jargy 664). When specifying in Arabic that one refers to religious songs, one may call them anashid diniyya (religious songs) or anashid islamiyya(Islamic songs), but, as pointed out, in English the most common term is nasheed.

2. See Awakening’s announcement of a billion views here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuM-Wewh5bA.

3. As far as we can tell, the following Awakening albums have been released in two versions: (Sami Yusuf), My Ummah (music version 2005, percussion version 2005); (Mesut Kurtis), Beloved (music version 2009, percussion version 2009); (Maher Zain), Thank You Allah (music version 2009, vocals-only version 2012); (Maher Zain), Forgive Me (music version 2012, vocals-only version 2012); (Mesut Kurtis), Tabassam (music version 2014, vocals-only version 2015); Maher Zain, One (music version 2016, vocals-only version 2017). Some records were also issued in different versions in different parts of the world or in different language versions, but this is of no importance to our article.

4. The graphical style and the positioning of the labels might be inspired by the “Parental Advisory” labels found on US CDs with explicit material.

5. See, for example, Sahih Bukhari volume 4, part 56, chapter 14, hadith no. 730 (available at https://www.sahih-bukhari.com); for a discussion, see Farmer chap. 2.

6. We will use “music” as a generic term in accordance with the practice of scholars writing in this field. The Arabic word musiqa (sometimes musiqi) has not always been the equivalent of music as it is today in Arabic Islamic writing. Rather, in classical times, musiqawas used in philosophical texts on music inspired by Greek thinking. When the legality and practice of music were discussed, the most common words were ghina’ (singing), sama’ (listening), sawt (voice, song, sound), al-tarab (enchantment, ecstasy), and malahior lahw(distraction, diversion). There are no references to music (musiqa) in general terms in the Qur’an or in the Hadith literature.

7. In Turkey, the phenomenon of clean pop music is often known as “Yesil Pop” (green pop music). Green is often seen as the color of Islam.

8. The first to engage in this politicization of nasheeds seems to have been a group of singers in Syria who, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, connected their art to Islamic revivalism (see Pieslak).

9. In this context, pitched instruments means instruments capable of playing melodic material, such as scales or notes.

10. A few instrumental melodies (probably made with a synthesizer) are already introduced on the film soundtrack Syukur 21 (2000), composed by Raihan.

11. The second track also features crickets and bird sounds.

12. Skjelbo’s example is in Danish. A young fan of Bollywood music explains that she sometimes “puts music aside” during religious holidays.

13. “Bleeping out” occurs when an explicit word or phrase is replaced with a bleep sound on a music track; see, for instance, Winfield and Davidson.

14. There are, of course, also examples of rap music being “cleaned” by other means – for example, by issuing versions with slightly altered text (see Nielsen and Krogh).

15. The album Thank You Allah has been issued in several versions, including one in French and a karaoke version.

16. The two tracks can be played simultaneously without ever getting out of sync. The vocals-only version fades a bit faster and so has a total playing time of 4:22, with the original having a playing time of 4:38.

17. This effect is clearly audible from 3:10 to 3:25.

18. This very concept – to make recorded vocal music sound like instrumental music – is of course not an exclusively Muslim phenomenon. Grammy-awarded American vocal pop group Pentatonix have demonstrated how strictly vocal-based productions can be made to sound incredibly close to “normal” instrument-based pop music, with vocals imitating everything from basses to cymbals, synths, hi hats, and bass drums. Pentatonix’s Daft Punk medley is a convincing example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MteSlpxCpo.

19. We have verified this by playing the two versions in perfect synchronization. It is further supported by an interview with Maher Zain by Otterbeck in 2017.