Summary

To try to cover the variety of North American Muslim musics in the United States would be a near impossible task. Assuming one were not to discuss musics that migrants, forced and voluntary, brought with them, and treated North American musics as de novo expressions, one would still be faced with numerous genres of music. However, one also has to include historical lineages, making the task even more difficult.

Instead, it may be more useful to think about the function of the musics of Muslims in the United States as one example. If one considers the arts in general as an expression of social realities, then musics are one vehicle in which one can understand how American Muslims respond to their social realities. These expressions can be reflective of the world in which they live, or aspirational. Art can exist in multiple states at the same time; it is not a binary of producer and audience perspectives. Music can be both a statement of perceived reality and a statement of a desired reality.