Women’s voices in diaspora: hip hop, spoken word, Islam and web 2.0

Abstract

This paper focuses on the artistic production of four hip hop and spoken word artists belonging to the Muslim diaspora, Poetic Pilgrimage, Alia Sharrief, Hanouneh and Alia Gabres, aiming to understand if such cultural practices can be understood as forms of political, civic and social activism, with the potential to broaden or create alternative public spheres (Fraser, 1990). It articulates a form of musical production often associated with Islam, hip hop (Alim, 2005; Miah & Kalra, 2008), with spoken word, produced by Muslim women in diaspora, migrants or descendants of migrants, with different backgrounds and different life stories associated with Islam, allowing them effective voice in their self-representation, considered from their online presence (NTI and web 2.0). The diversity of the cultural producers and their forms of expression considered in this paper is understood as an example of the diversity within Islam and also as a denial of any orientalist stereotypes (Saïd, 1979) about Muslim women.