Israel - Palestine and the History of Islam in Muslimgauze

Muslimgauze may still be a little unfamiliar to us, especially since he took the genre of electro music. The electro music genre itself has long been popular but is only consumed by certain circles such as DJs and people who like to visit discos. But who would have thought that electro music could talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Electro music began to appear in the 1980s in New York and began to spread to Japan and western Europe. Electro emerged from a mixture of Japanese and German hip-hop, rap and electro pop genres. The electro genre then experienced its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. The electro music genre is played through the medium of electronic drum instruments that produce high and low instruments without vocals, such as the sound of "dum-dum" accompanied by high notes that we often see in movies or soap operas that show scenes in discos.

The success of the electro genre has given rise to many electro songwriters, one of whom is Bryn Jones (1961-1999). The Englishman created an electro music project under the stage name Muslimgauze and released electro songs from 1982 until his death in 1999.

Muslimgauze focuses their music on the history of the Muslim world especially on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Muslimgauze was originally formed as a resistance to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The invasion seemed to be the turning point at which he began to support the Palestinian cause.

Some of his albums seem to support Palestine in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict such as, Abu Nital (1987), The rape of Palestine (1988), Intifaxa (1990), Hamas Arc (1993) and others. Muslimgauze also released albums related to the political situation in the Middle East, such as Vote Hezbollah (1993), Return Of Black September (1996) and Uzbekistani Bizzare And Souk (1996).

Before he died due to a rare fungal infection, he was quite prolific in producing Muslimgauze music albums. The album produced was only released on a limited and exclusive basis because it used a small production house. However he managed to do several live performances in Germany, Japan, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

In April 2014, Vinyl On Demand released Chasing the Shadow of Bryn Jones 1983–1988, a box of 10 LPs set to reissue early albums originally released by Kinematopgraph Products, Recloose Organization, and Limited Editions. Each package includes bonus tracks taken from period compilation albums. The release was also accompanied by a biography written by Ibrahim Khider titled Muslimgauze: Chasing the Shadow of Bryn Jones.

Article by Ikhlasul Ansori
This article originally appeared on ruangobrol.id (December 16, 2019)
Translated with the assitance of Bing Translate.