Understand What Music Is
There are producers and there are consumers of music. All of us consume music (an audience) while only a few of us actually produce it (artists). By and large we listen to music as a form of recreation known as entertainment. This entertainment can be relaxing (ambient jazz), it can be devotional (gospel) or it can be stimulating (club hip-hop) and of course other variants. Musical entertainment can also be very purpose driven helping to facilitate an atmosphere of learning or it can be quite therapeutic. Music can supposedly entice you to mull around longer in that bookstore and hopefully buy more books or help aid in aggression for the purpose fighting or war and it is used for romance and sex. The commonality you’ll see however is that music mainly appeals to our emotions. It is important to remember this point when we talk more about the actual thrust of this article. Music is not something that appeals PRIMARILY to one’s intellect. This is not to say that songs like What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye or Fight The Power by Public Enemy do not appeal to more than emotion. But in popular music, the model that most Muslim artists seem to be following, these songs are rarities and often products of great social times. When we understand what music is and more importantly WHY people listen to it then we can start to understand what music is not and what it realistically can and cannot accomplish.
The new album Spoken Soul will be released this summer. This is the album cover (CD version). I will also be providing an alternate format never before used by a Muslim Spoken Word artist. I will announce that alternate format in a few weeks. I thank you all for your support thus far with my work as a poet and in trying to bring Spoken Word to new audiences. This new album is a very personal one and was not written with a commercial release in mind. As such I hope you will find it to be authentic, real and relevant to you. It's an introspective album. The themes talk about relationships, inner demons, issues with race and culture amongst Muslims, the journey of one's self towards improvement and as with my previous CD I have an ode to Women specifically our mothers. I will provide more information as the days progress. 
Often times when we discuss Women and Islam there is a particular verse in the Quran that is often the source of a great deal of controversy. Chapter 4 (The Women) verse 34 is the verse in the Quran that contains a statement that seems to condone wife beating when translated into English. We conclude this season of The ChaiPod with an explanation of this verse and other points of controversy with Sheikh Abdullah Adhami, founder and director of Sakeenah. 