Performance: Hip-hop and Sufi Chant

How do new performances of religiosity come to be accepted or rejected? How do new performances build on and subtly modify previous performances? Although the talk about religious practice often assumes that such questions are determined by ancient texts or contemporary arguments about them, the social process surrounding the performance and evaluation of religious practices is complex. Since 2014, I have been researching the growing prominence of Sufi hip-hop or rap music among Taalibe Baay, or adherents of the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi movement in Senegal. I was surprised to find that, although mixing Islam and music is often controversial, Fayḍa hip-hop artists are widely accepted by other members of their religious community as communicators of important religious messages.

Since 2014, I have interviewed around 50 Fayḍa rappers in Senegal and the UK about the question of hip-hop as a medium for communicating religious messages and as a religious practice in itself. They and other Fayḍa adherents often described rap lyrics as divinely inspired and as a means to attain a higher level of spirituality, much as people describe classical Sufi poetry.

Another increasingly popular performance genre I have examined is yëngu, which combines Sufi chant with frenetic dancing and drumming. This genre has gained far less acceptance than hip-hop among the general Fayḍa community and leadership, although yëngu practitioners themselves are generally accepted in the community largely because of their service and success in recruiting youth. One question I am examining is why one genre (such as hip-hop) manages to gain wide acceptance with little discussion while another (such as yëngu) remains widely criticized.

My ongoing research situates these genres in the context of a long history of Arabic-language and Wolof-language sung Sufi poetry. I am also extending my gender analysis from women Sufi leaders to changing notions of Muslim masculinity in the male-dominated hip-hop scene.

Some publications so far on this topic:

• 2025. “Technologies of Self-Wrapping: Female Chanters in the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi Community in Senegal.” Religions 16 (4): 423. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040423.

• Hill, Joseph, Jeanette S. Jouili, Kendra Salois, Wind Dell Woods, and Joshua Edelman. 2019. “Forum: Religion, Renovation, Rap & Hip Hop.” Performance, Religion, and Spirituality 2 (1): 57–84.

• Hill, Joseph. 2018. “They Say a Woman’s Voice is ʿAwra,” Chapter 6 of Wrapping Authority, on women’s participation in sacred chant.

• ———. 2017. “A Mystical Cosmopolitanism: Sufi Hip-Hop and the Aesthetics of Islam in Dakar.” Culture and Religion 18 (4).

• ———. 2016a. “‘Baay Is the Spiritual Leader of the Rappers’: Performing Islamic Reasoning in Senegalese Sufi Hip-Hop.” Contemporary Islam 10 (2). doi:10.1007/s11562-016-0359-1.

• ———. 2016b. “God’s Name Is Not a Game: Performative Apologetics in Sufi Dhikr Performance in Senegal.” Journal for Islamic Studies.