Muslim Lifestyle

Kareem Salama (awaiting mod)

Issue 100

While the style and even sound might seem unique to America, the narratives and lyrics of Country Music are deeply rooted in universal themes; unadulterated love, despair, family, and redemption. A shame then that most people’s understanding of the genre, including my own until recently, is so stuck in caricature.

 Not many non-white musicians make the big time, and Country has often been mistakenly seen as the most segregated of all genres: the ‘redneck’ soundtrack of a white South. But ever since the first ‘hillbilly’ records from the early decades of the 20th century, there has always been a black presence in Country; now, another ‘other’ is making the cross-cultural leap into Country Music in the person of Oklahoma native Kareem Salama. Kareem, whose parents emigrated from Egypt during the 1960s, is a product of the Southern environment where he was brought up, fused with an Islamic upbringing. He has wholeheartedly embraced his Southern identity.

 In an American musical landscape, where closet Islam meshed mainly through rap and hip-hop from African-American Muslims, Kareem has found fame in his unique position as the first Muslim Country singer. The genre has always been ripe for cross-cultural fertilisation: even under segregation, musicians of all colours influenced each other (Elvis famously drew heavily from black music); and Country Music has always been woven into the fabric of daily life, its lyrics reflecting a rural working-class experience shared equally by all.

 “Country is very close to gospel music, which had a huge influence on the flavours and the shapes and harmonies,” Kareem explains, with a cowboy twang in his voice. Accordingly, “the last bastion of ethical tunes,” as he terms the genre, tends to contain a deeper meaning than most pop songs. “Of course, I am not trying to be condescending towards other kinds of music,” he hastens to add. “I mean, Country has a lot of pop elements, and my songs do too, but they still retain some oldness in the sound and the form – making it compatible with a little more seriousness and profundity.”

 Kareem self-released his first two albums: Generous Peace, a translation of his name, came out in 2006, and This Life of Mine was released a year later. “During the last year and eight months I reassessed where I wanted to go with this career. I have new recorded material, and work that is written and waiting to be recorded – which I want to release into the mainstream, so it can be available to everyone. I have a lot of fans who are not Muslim, and a lot of fans who are Muslim. And of course, they shop at the same place and watch some of the same programmes.”

 “Now here’s an interesting thing,” he enthuses. “Most of the music industry is tanking in terms of album sales, but the most lucrative genre, still selling millions of albums, is Country Music. The reason, based on my own research and intuition, is because Country Music actually means something to people. And so, rather than connecting to a single, something that people dance to in a club, people actually connect to the artist. I try to inspire both Muslims and non-Muslims, and people are touched by it. There are a lot of country singers that obviously aren’t Muslim but we all try to do the same thing.”

 Kareem now plans distribution through big record labels, like EMI and SONY, so his newest release can be more widely received. The smaller select Muslim audiences he performed for were initially curious, and ultimately appreciative of his songs, attracted by the common theme of religious values found both in Country Music and in their own lives. This connection allowed Kareem to freely mix Islamic ideas into his music, whilst ensuring that it maintained broad appeal; that mixture has worked, as Kareem has drawn a large following of non-Muslim Country Music fans. Going mainstream seems like a logical choice for him — there is nothing specifically in his lyrics that cannot transcend the Islamic Nasheed genre, and his music is in fact very Country Western: “I do think that it’s important to cross boundaries. I think that in the future you’ll see more and more Muslims in the arts are being recognised by the mainstream.”

 Kareem feels that artists who confine their work to Muslim audiences are missing out on getting a universal message to a wider audience: Islamic lyrics, like Islamic values, are applicable to more than Muslims.  “Music is not only about entertainment, it can be about devotion. It depends on intention. I work hard on trying to remove my ego from the song and write. The more of me there is in a song, the less inspirational it will be for others.”

 The singer’s motivation seems to stem from making music that inspires others, to make something beautiful that that holds some deeper meaning for the listener. “If I were to listen to any overtly religious music I’d listen to old Sufi music, the recitation of old poetry; written by people who hopefully tried to overcome themselves and imparted a state of peace through the blessing of their words.”

In an increasingly multi-cultural world, people take inspiration from all sorts of different places. Kareem is writing a score for that world: the messages in his music are timeless, and not restricted to any single religion. “It surprises me to hear from people who are not Muslim. Well, at first it surprised me that anybody was inspired by my music,” he admits with disarming modesty.

 Whether you’re a country music fan or not, you can’t help but be won over by the warmth and sincerity of Kareem’s stage persona. Drawing large crowds whenever he is in concert today, Kareem has always had a flair for performance: “I sang in school plays when I was a little kid. And for some reason whenever I sang, I always sang with a twang,” he reminisces. “I was close to my music teacher and drama teacher. When I was a freshman in high school my buddy Kirk and I won third place in the state for a duet, a really big deal at the time because no freshman even went to state let alone winning a place. I have always enjoyed performance and competition. I grew away from a lot of it as I got older, but one of my mother’s friends,  Barbara – God rest her soul – was like an aunt to me. She always said that I would end up being an actor or a lawyer. As a Muslim though, she said I wouldn’t end up as an actor.”

 Turns out, Barbara was right. At only 31 years old, Kareem has already worn lots of different career hats: amateur boxer, engineer, and now a fully-fledged lawyer. When I suggest this Kareem jokes about how his head gets cold: “I graduated with an undergraduate degree in Engineering and then did a J.D. (Juris Doctorate), which gives professional recognition of a doctoral degree in Law.”  Kareem hopes to sit the Bar Exam this summer.

 For a singer-songwriter to leave his music behind in pursuit of a law degree makes me wonder whether he wanted to make a difference in a new way, to reach people through a qualification rather than through his music. There is a long pause as he considers this. “As far as the law degree was concerned – something happened towards the end of my undergraduate years that was pretty difficult for me at the time. It lasted about a year and it’s really what prompted me to want to go into Law. Ultimately, Law School teaches a real skill, the ability (one I am not so great at) to articulate your thoughts and look at something from a lot of different perspectives, to look past the initial meanings of words, and to communicate with people. As far as thinking about how I wanted to save this person or that person, that was a part of it but it wasn’t very specific.”

“Different events have caused me to do different things. I was an amateur boxer for quite some time. I took that pretty seriously. I didn’t choose to do it because I was violent,” Kareem clarifies quickly. “It was just something that interested me. While I was growing up, my parents always taught us that if you are interested in something, or if you have – and I say this a lot – a  good inspiration in your heart, you should listen to it, or at least see where it might take you.”

 Career changes might be construed as the sign of a man who bores easily, or is perhaps uncertain of what to do. Kareem elaborates: “I definitely don’t get bored very easily; in fact I don’t ever get bored. Alhamdhulillah. The course of my life is such that it has taken me to a lot of different places. One of my songs has the lyrics ‘Don’t worry if your life doesn’t play out with perfect symmetry/ I say there’s nothing wrong with a life that grows like a tree’; meaning that life goes in different directions, or doesn’t actually grow in a straight line.”

 “It’s about letting God do what He wishes with you, rather than trying to will so much of what you want. I mean, you obviously have to have a direction, and have to work at what you want to do.” Kareem considers his words carefully, to explain his exact meaning. “But sometimes people want something so badly, they become angry and bitter when they don’t get it, and miss out on the fact that there might be another opportunity or something else that is waiting for them that may be far better. So if I find a roadblock somewhere, I don’t just sit there and cry about it, I look at what else I can do.”

 Considering his scattered career, I ask Kareem whether he always impulsively chases what interests him. “Sometimes I like wet my feet. Like one weekend – and this is kind of silly,” he laughs sheepishly. “I just had an interest in desalination plants, when they remove salt from water, off the coast, especially in areas where you don’t have much water, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Mauritania. I didn’t get very far because I figured, I am not super-interested in this, but I did go out of my way to actually get a book and read about it.”

 The question of identity is one the singer has had to face many times; people are curious to know how the young Texan Muslim country singer grapples with being Muslim and American. Born in Oklahoma, Kareem lived there until he was 18 before moving to Texas. Oklahoma and Texas, he says happily, are so similar: “They’re like brothers, and could be one state – the culture is exactly the same. It’s all I’ve known.”

 “On a more philosophical level I think it is very normal for a person to love where they are from, and I think it’s actually pretty ungrateful if people don’t recognise that. The point is that Kareem Salama was fed by farmers who grew crops on this land and who were American. I was taught by teachers who were American. I think that if a person has a sense of gratitude in their hearts they will naturally incline towards the people that raised them. Likewise it’s natural to incline towards their ancestral homeland; I mean that is a part of my heritage, it is a part of what gave me life.”

 Perhaps this discussion comes about because his hometown does not have a significant Muslim population, and people are curious to know how Kareem unites the various facets of his identity. Journalists only ever want to ask what it’s like to be The Only Muslim Man in Country. Kareem is indignant at any suggestion of conflict. “But even if you look at a place like Egypt, their ancestry is from all different places. My grandmother’s family were probably Spanish Moors from the Castille area. In other words, people in Egypt are not Ancient Egyptians, they too are from all different places! The Middle East and North African regions are full of immigrants who settled in those areas. People accept the fact they are Egyptian because that is where they are from and they practice Islam in hopefully the best way that they know.”

 “For me, my American identity is not up for discussion, it was never something that I was fraught over, and my parents never discussed it with me – it was just always a given. I am American. I was born and raised here. And it was also explained that my family originally came from Egypt. There was never any problem with that, or at least I didn’t see a problem with it. It felt natural. And even when I started doing a lot of interviews and people would ask me about identity conflict, to this day, as you can tell – I don’t know how to give a concise answer because it was not an issue for me.”

 Kareem continues with the example of Muslim scholars: “Their titles are based on the city that they were from, or perhaps even the city that they adopted; for instance in the case of Imam Shadhili who was not actually from a city called Shadhila, he actually went there later and was given that name. Imam al Jazuli was from Jazula, or Imam Bukhari was from Bukhara. If you don’t recognise that where you’re from is part of who you are, you are going to feel a sense of conflict inside yourself, and it may say something about your own sense of gratitude – that earth, that particular place, that’s where God chose for you to be born.” And it’s all God’s Earth, I suggest. “Exactly!” he agrees, pleased to have found an understanding. “Exactly.”

 Kareem poses an interesting phenomenon as the first  known Muslim Country singer. People are drawn to the idea of how he reconciles being Texan and being Muslim. He answers through his songs; a combination of his Islamic values and passion for Country Western music. He has a great love for both his American home and also his ancestral heritage, truly someone who has no need to struggle to reconcile two polar elements of his identity, but rather comfortable knowing it is one and the same. Kareem’s many career hats are just another instance of him reconciling his talents, trying to gain perspective after perspective in terms of building himself as a person and as a musician. With Egyptian roots and a Southern drawl,

Kareem sings at a very American crossroad. While his Islamic background may continue to attract a loyal Muslim audience, he is also capable of capturing the attention of more diverse listeners. We eagerly anticipate his new songs, and wait for the world to hear.´

www.kareemsalama.com