Kufiyas (and other pop Orientalisms) in SPIN's 20 Best Videos of 2010

SPIN Magazine's list of the 20 Best Videos of 2010 was recently published. The kufiya makes appearances in two of the top 20.

At number 20: MIA's "Born Free." You read about it on hawblawg here.

At number 7, Superchunk's "Digging for Something." You read about it on hawgblawg here.

Superchunk - Digging For Something from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Some well-known kufiya wearers show up in other vids. Das Racist's "Who's That Brown?" is #6.



Das Racist don't wear kufiyas in the vid, but they have been spotted wearing them on other occasions. (The t-shirt, worn by Victor Vazquez, says Coca Cola in Arabic.)


?uestlove of The Roots shows up in Duck Sauce's "Barbara Streisand" video (# 9), at about 0:27. As hawgblawg readers now, he too is a sometime kufiya wearer. (The photo below looks better than the one on the original post.)


Other pop Orientalisms:

Fez alert! Armand Van Helden of Duck Soup is shown wearing a Shiner's Fez in the "Barbara Streisand" video (#9) at 0:36. This puts him in very good company, as you know from reading hawblawg's previous fez alerts.

And RZA of the Wu Tang Clan shows up throughout the Vampire Weekend "Giving Up the Gun" video (#4) as the tennis umpire. RZA is a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters). You've read my article about the Five Percenters here. And I've told you about THE book about the Nation, by Michael Muhammad Knight's The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-hop, and the Gods of New York.

RZA and the rest of the Wu Tang are from Shaolin (Staten Island). I was born there too. That about ties it all together.

Happy New Year!

?uestlove Kufiya

A sort of update about The Roots, house band for "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." The promotional material produced just prior to the show's opening, which featured the band, showed the Roots' drummer ?uestlove garbed in kufiya. I froze a frame on my computer, and shot this shot.

Check out this review of The Roots' first week with Fallon. It says, among other things, "the greatest revelation of the first week of "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"...was that it's wholly plausible that the Roots are funnier than their host."

Muslims are all over...

Three random indicators:

1. Did you catch this? Snoop Doggy Dog has reportedly joined the Nation of Islam. He appeared this past weekend at the NOI's annual Saviours' Day convention in Chicago, which commemorates the birth of NOI founder and God, Master Fard. According to The Guardian, he explained his actions as follows: "I'm an advocate for peace. I've been in the peace movement ever since I've been making music," he told followers. "My whole thing is not about really trying to push my thing on you. It's just about the way I live, and I live how I'm supposed to live as far as doing what's right and representing what's right. That's why I was here today."

The photo (Charles Rex Arbogast, AP) shows Snoop in suit and tie, greeting Minister Louis Farrakhan.

2. The new season of the TNT show "Saving Grace," starring Holly Hunter, started last night. The premise of the show is that Hunter's character (Grace Hanadarko) is in need of salvation, and that an angel named Earl appears to her all the time, in pursuit of that mission. So, on some level, this is a quintessentially "Christian"--albeit terribly quirky--show. Interesting then that the theme song for this show about salvation is written and performed by Everlast, a devout Muslim (Sunni, not Nation of Islam).

3. And then, to repeat the previous post, The Roots (two Muslims, of sorts), as house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. On the first show, last night, The Roots sounded very hot, and were featured prominently. (No kufiya, alas, around ?uestlove's neck.) Watch the opening here:



Ubiquitous. Mainstream. Time for more recognition.

The Roots: House Band for Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Talk Show (+ ?uestlove in Kufiya)

This really blows me away: The Roots as the house band for "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," which opens tomorrow night (March 2) on NBC. Wow! Check it out, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

As if to confirm how cool The Roots really are, drummer ?uestlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson) appears in a black-and-white kufiya in the video that accompanies the article, which shows the band getting ready for their appearance. (I'm not able to embed it, for some reason.) Or maybe we should deduce that the fact of ?uestlove wearing a kufiya makes it cool. (Thanks, Chris!)

The photo that accompanies the article, however, indicates that ?uestlove will be in a suit, and sans kufiya, on the show itself. At least on night one. I'm gonna try to stay up and tune in to check it out.

It should also be noted that according to a list of the Islamic affiliations of hip-hop artists compiled some years ago, Roots leader and co-founder (along with ?uestlove) Black Thought (Tariq Luqman Trotter) belongs to The Nation of Gods and Earths (the "Five-Percenters"). Malik B., who left the group in 2001, is a Sunni Muslim. (The list also mentions M.A.R.S. of the Roots as a Five-Percenter; I can't figure out who that is.)