My Ummah by Sami Yusuf

If London-based singer/songwriter Sami Yusuf had been crooning love songs, he would be just another face in the crowd. But as a young and handsome proponent of Islam, he’s shot to fame among Muslim communities living in Western countries. His self-proclaimed purpose is to improve Islam’s reputation and revamp its stuffy, old-fashioned image by couching religious lyrics in contemporary, youth-oriented pop music.

And he seems to be succeeding.

These days in Egypt, Yusuf is the darling of born-again Muslims from the wealthier classes, especially young girls who are entranced by his good looks and pop style. His concert at the Cairo Opera House was legendary: You’d never seen so many BMW and Mercedes-Benz convertibles, custom models and sport coupes in the parking lot. There are still stories circulating about the veiled girl who climbed onto the roof of her coupe to see better, revealing a pair of skintight jeans. Not surprisingly, his new CD, My Ummah, is already a hit in Cairo.

The first thing I noticed on My Ummah was the tiny logo on the cover that s “Music Version.” Checking his website, I discovered that he’s produced two versions, this and a “Percussion Version” with “primarily percussion based instruments such as the daff [tambour] for example” — a misleading distinction, since percussion is music. Why he would produce two versions of the entire album had me perplexed. I browsed a bit in the hope that his internet fans’ comments could help me understand:

[H]ow come Sami Yusuf only uses music in his songs? It would be nice if he also had versions of songs without music sold on CDs cuz some ppl dont like listening to music he needs to make versions of songs without music so everyone could listen to them.

Say what? Songs without words I’ve heard of, but songs without music? But then I read another post that enlightened me:

[T]here are haram [sinful] instruments in Sami Yusuf’s songs. the only halal instrument is the daff [W]hy taint a great nasheed [anthem] with haram music he’s doing haram pray for Sami that Allah forgives his sins and that he starts doing halal [non-sinful] nasheeds soon

Ah-ha! Apparently, Yusuf has heard the calls of pained conservatives and so produced two versions of this album: One with melodic instrumental accompaniment, and one with percussive instrumental accompaniment.

And yes, they are both music, and this is just silly. On the other hand, if he did this daff thing for artistic reasons, not to pacify these people, I forgive him.

I don’t forgive the preaching, though. I dislike lyrics that preach anything, be it Say No to Drugs, tolerance or whatever. My problems started with the title. I would have thought the first item on the agenda of an aspiring reformer would be to break Islam’s contrived link with Arabic words and phrases, exemplified by ridiculous phrases like “My Ummah.”

Why not “My People?” Because the word is ‘indigenous to the region?’ That’s the same logic that has who-knows-how-many Americans believing that madrasah actually means a ‘terrorist training school.’ We-want-a-better-image-for-Islam proponents, of all people, should run screaming from defamiliarization (linguist Roman Jakobson’s term for couching familiar concepts in unfamiliar terms to make them seem strange to the reader). They’re the ones who should be pushing for ‘prayer’ instead of ‘salat,’ ‘sinful’ instead of ‘haram’ and, yes, ‘people’ instead of ‘Ummah.’ It’s things like this that suggest either hypocrisy (playing on Muslim pride) or a kind of linguistically-unsavvy heavy-handedness.

This lack of finesse also extends to Yusuf’s lyrics. The rhymes are largely forced, the words too ponderous. Look at this: “Muhammad the light of my eyes/About you they spread many lies/If only they came to realize/Bloodshed you despise.” I believe Yusuf is sincere, and what he’s saying is true, but he must find someone whose idiom is English to make his lyrics ‘flow’ a bit.

In the music lies the album’s real strength. While the melodies make for easy listening, it’s the production that lifts them onto a whole new plane. I think the credit would go to the otherwise-nameless Barron of “Mixed and mastered by Barron at Awakening Studios.” The balance between voice and instrumentals is perfect, the instruments are richly textured and well defined; it’s an absolute joy to listen to if only for this. The music seems to bodily surround you, even on a tinny little boombox, creating the illusion of different acoustics and performance spaces. Sometimes you hear the strings, as on the Oriental “Muhammad,” sounding far away, yet not reverberating, as though in a big carpeted hall. Other times you hear the startling, almost-touching intimacy of Yusuf’s voice scratchily whispering into the microphone, as in the first lines of “My Ummah.” I haven’t heard a more professional sound in ages, and certainly not on an Arabic album.

I also like Yusuf’s rich orchestration (he plays a variety of instruments himself, too), which, aside from some artificial-sounding synthesized strings at the start of “My Ummah,” uses many Oriental and Western instruments. As far as the songs go, the most interesting ones musically are the Arabic ones drawn from folklore, such as “Hasbi Rabbi.” Yusuf has an effortless tenor voice and is obviously gifted at languages — in this album I counted him singing in Urdu and Turkish, both with great accents, as well as English and Arabic. He’s a relaxed crooner, singing close to the mike with a nice smooth sound. The problem arises when he sings in English to Arabic music: the sound takes on a nasal quality, which is a trademark ofArabic singing. That said, his singing is best on songs that are actually written Western-style. I think he should stick to Arabic wherever the melody is Oriental. Also, until he gets someone to work with him who understands how these languages and musical idioms work, it would be better for him not to switch between English and Arabic within the same song.

To sum up, My Ummah is characterized by a very-well-arranged smooth blandness punctuated by seconds of brilliance, weighted down by unpoetic, unsubtle lyrics. Still, it makes such easy listening that I’m just going to go and listen to it again

like Amr Diab. Sure, he was the guy everybody loved to hate when he first came out in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, but now, over 15 years and 101 singers later, his position’s not unlike McDonald’s getting all the bad press as though they were the only restaurant serving unhealthy food: the earliest and biggest kid on the block, taking the rap for the failings of an entire industry.

Alam El Phan’s latest compilation of Diab’s greatest hits shows this in no uncertain terms. Yes, he’s sentimental and mawkish, but who isn’t? Yes, his tunes are bland, but whose aren’t? This retrospective (and again, who among our singers has had enough hits to merit one?) showcases Diab’s adoption of major-minor Western keys and harmonies before many others, his early adoption of the fad for Latin music and reminds us of his fashion innovations as seen in his music videos. Silly teen idol he may be, but he’s always held his albums to a certain standard of quality that is only patchily apparent in the industry. et