Mashouf Reunites with JorDan in LA

I met up with JorDan last week to talk about his premiere of My Father's Son at Cinequest Film Festival. Check out the video for a clip of the film.

The Hurt Locker: The (Mis)use of Sacred Muslim Symbols

After watching Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker I felt it was necessary to write about what I found to be a careless use of sacred sound design. The Hurt Locker is an Oscar nominated film about a US army bomb disposal unit in Baghdad during the early stages of the US occupation of Iraq in 2004. The film contains various intense scenes encountering IEDs, car bombs, and explosive vests disarmed by the film's protagonist, a young die hard bomb expert Sergeant First Class William James.

My greatest criticism with The Hurt Locker is its inconspicuously (conspicuous for Muslims) offensive use of the Muslim call to prayer and the Quran as a device to prelude a scene of violence. The sound of the "Adhan" (call to prayer) or verses from the Muslim holy book are heard before every scene discovering an explosive device.

However, the film's overall portrayal of Muslims and/or Iraqis is not completely homogeneous, unlike 95% of American films about the Middle East, but by no means is it a huge step forward. Iraqi characters range from militant Muslim gun men, pornography selling merchants, and innocent Iraqis living in a war torn Iraq.

The film as a whole I feel has no intention of painting Iraqis and/or Muslims as evil people. However, the use of Islamic symbols in the form of the Adhan and the Quran are used specifically to connote the presence of violence and danger. The use of these symbols as dark, exotic, and evil forces is not new to cinema (see The Exorcist), however, we should expect more from a film produced in 2008. Non-Muslim film producers somehow fail to see that these verses are sacred in Islam, a religion followed by over a billion people worldwide. Any use of these symbols to connote danger alienates the non-Muslim world from seeing Islam as a faith tradition rather than a doctrine of violence and hate.

I hope I'm not the first to tell say that this "critically acclaimed" work needs a lot more... work. I think it's time filmmakers stop pretending that they "understand" and start admitting that pretentious portrayals of the world only expose their ignorance.

REPOST: Oldschool Varzesh Bastani Tape

Since people have been asking where the old varzesh bastani tracks are that I posted on imeem a while back are, I decided to repost them on Soundcloud.

enjoy

Zurkhaneh Side A by mashouf


Zurkhaneh Side B by mashouf

i'll try to make this more regular

*music courtesy Roch Mirabeau


I recently met up with Mark Williams-Washington at one of West LA's few 24 hour spots. We'll be collaborating on a few projects in the coming months... more later.

A Stroll Through The Tenderloin

ten·der·loin (tender-loin)
n.

1. The tenderest part of a loin of beef, pork, or similar cut of meat.

2. A city district notorious for vice and graft.

Holiest of Things

photo by David Gilkey/NPR

I commissioned this poem in 2004 for a video I did about children in Palestine. A friend of mine who I had been blessed to meet named Samer Tamimi is an amazing poet who is originally Palestinian. His poem is what remains from the project.

Download and share.
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The RZA and Hip Hop Spirituality

I had become a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan when I was fairly young, hearing "Protect Ya Neck" on the radio in the early/mid 90s after the release of their first album. A few Wu-Tang songs circulated on the homemade mix tapes my older brother made from the radio that I listened to, years before I even purchased a Wu Tang album. By 97 and the arrival of the second Wu-Tang album, "Forever" I was all ears. Since getting my dad to drive me to a Sam Goody after school was way out of the question, a friend of mine bought the CD for me the day it came out. I listened to the album in one session and it left me rapping the lyrics for years to come in addition to asking a lot of questions about the world.

When I heard the opening verse from "Impossible" it left me searching for more..

Fusion of the five elements, to search for the higher intelligence
Women walk around celibate, livin irrelevant
The most benevolent king, communicatin through your dreams
Mental pictures been painted, Allah's heard and seen
everywhere, throughout your surroundin atmosphere
Troposphere, thermosphere, stratosphere
Can you imagine from one single idea, everything appeared here
Understanding makes my truth, crystal clear...

The RZA's lyrical career is by no means one that is squeeky clean nor void of hypocrisies and contradictions. In fact, RZA's use 5 Percenter teachings generally tunes me out of his philosophy. However, his verses have generally served as encouragement for his community and his listeners to seek knowledge, read, expand their vocabulary and to calculate actions, seeing life as a chessboard.

RZA's new book looks like an interesting read but more importantly, books authored within the hip hop community, though rare, reach an audience that may have never picked up a book. The desire for knowledge is shared by all people, but without credibility in the culture of the audience, words will fail to stick.

RZA's humility in the above video is commendable for a rap artist and he has definitely sparked my attention as he did before in 97. I look forward to reading The Tao of Wu.