Scene Building

As part of all the post-pop Montreal reviews this week, the following link made it's way into my inbox. It's a story that rounds up the top 5 "emerging" acts in Montreal right now. I don't really have much to say about the content of the list. The artists are all talented and worth a listen, though just like the rest of the Pop Montreal schedule, it's a pretty fractional and partial list of the various kinds of music the city has to offer. The fact that the list is there at all is what I found more interesting. If you've ever read my thoughts on the branding of the Montreal scene, you'll know that Spin played an influential role in shaping the discourse around music in Montreal a few years ago, back when the Arcade Fire were taking off. 5 years later, it's a much more fractured media and musical landscape and it seems to me that while the idea of a scene is still very powerful, how it plays out in reality is becoming ever more diffuse.

Maybe I had scenes on the mind last night when I attended the premiere of a friend's new documentary film: Taqwacore: The Birth of Islam Punk. The movie "follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene: from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white-convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans." My friend spent spent three years documenting taqwacore (Taqwa = "god consciousness" + Core) bands and concerts across the U.S. and Pakistan, catching glimpses as he went of the many and complicated faces of contemporary Islam. Oh, he also was there when a line up of taqwacore acts shocked the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in Chicago with a frenetic concert that ended with hundreds of conservative Muslims fleeing the building and the cops showing up to shut the event down (easily one of the film's best scenes).

Throughout the film, I kept thinking about what it meant for the idea of "scenes" in cultural and communication studies, since here was a scene that was imagined before it was real. It's almost as if the scene needed a blueprint before it could exist. Michael Knight, the author who penned the original Taqwacores manifesto/fiction, is an active participant throughout the film, and it's clear he's had a role in actively building and maintaining this scene/community. The film (and its director) are now also playing their part in solidifying the idea of taqwacore. In a certain sense, the film itself is both a product of and a contribution to the ongoing evolution of the taqwacore scene.

All this is to say the movie is as much about music and Islam as it is about the way ideas migrate from place to place and person to person. Taqwacore and the cultural footsteps it leaves behind mean something different for each of the people who follow it.