The rise of a Muslim middle class in Britain: ethnicity, music and the performance of Muslimness

Morris, Carl orcid iconORCID: 0000-0001-6698-3116 (2020) The rise of a Muslim middle class in Britain: ethnicity, music and the performance of Muslimness. Ethnicities, 20 (3). pp. 628-648. ISSN 1468-7968

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796818822541

Abstract

This paper uses original fieldwork data to examine the role of class and ethnicity in shaping performed identities for Muslim musicians. It claims that the emergence of a Muslim public sphere in Britain – which includes music as one important cultural component – is implicated by dominant notions of Muslimness that are developed in a field of power relations structured by class and ethnicity. An assertion of middle class values and tastes inform Muslimness and are interwoven with the differential experiences of diverse Muslim ethnic groups in Britain. The paper examines in turn the influence of a broadly-defined Middle Eastern consumer culture on ‘Islamic pop music’; the experiences of South Asian musicians in navigating or shaping this context and a wider South Asian diaspora in the UK; and the attempt by Black Muslim musicians to critique perceived ethnic hierarchies within Britain and the wider Muslim umma.


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