Music is like oxygen or language. It’s everywhere. And it has a fluctuating relationship with Muslim communities, though it is often a vehicle for preaching, personal and cultural expression, and spiritual journeys. Great scholars like al-Ghazali and al-Farabi had a special interest in music. In Indonesia, there are musicians like Rhoma Irama, Bimbo, and Nasida Ria. Within the rohis (Islamic religiosity) movement, there are various kinds of nasyid–Islamic-themed instrumental songs. Even on the occasion of Ramadan, famous bands have had religious albums, such as Gigi and Ungu. Music became an oasis of spiritualism, including as a symbol and da’wah.

However, of course many Muslims reject music, especially musical instruments. We can see such an example in Khuda Kay Liye (Pakistan, 2007) or The Perfect Candidate (Saudi Arabia, 2019), which opened the 2022 Madani International Film Festival. This Saudi Arabia’s official representative film for the Academy Awards reveals the dynamics of musicians in the Middle East. Hopefully, the selected films in this program can ignite a discussion that’s more than just fiqh-oriented halal-haram but also can be read as part of a more human muslim world’s dynamics in socio-cultural, economical, and political terms. 

In the Music program, we can also see various kinds of music genres, including tarling–music from the northern coast of West Java–(in Tarling is Darling, 2017) and rap (Salam, 2022). The goal is to emphasize that the wealth of music in the “living Islam” tradition is not only about nasyid, gambus, kasidah, and religious albums from well-known bands.

Music in the daily life of Muslim cultures is inevitable. Everybody loves music, it is a part of people’s daily lives, be it in a Muslim-majority country, in a diaspora community, or even among war refugees. “Living Islam” is also seen in two films, Unkapani: The Endless Tale (Turkey, 2021), which describes the ups and downs of record company Unkapi Recorders Bazaar amid the tide of digitalization that beat cassettes and CDs, and Forbidden Strings (2019), which tells the story of Afghan immigrants’ children in Iran, who found a rock band and plan to perform in their home country despite many challenges.

Ekky Imanjaya