Mapping The Kominas' sociomusical transnation: punk, diaspora, and digital media

Abstract

The Kominas is a South Asian American punk band known for its iconic role within the punk-inspired, Muslim-affiliated music culture self-labeled as ‘Taqwacore’. Since its national tour in 2006, The Kominas has been creating a radically translocal social geography comprised of musicians, listeners, artists, filmmakers, and bloggers on- and off-line. The band concocts a transnational sound, combining elements of Punjabi and punk music. This paper examines The Kominas’ web production and interactions over digital social media on Myspace and Twitter. It discusses how the band members contemplate their troubled sense of national belonging; and illustrates how they build a diasporic space that is digitally produced and unified by minoritarian politics. This ethnographic project uses participant-observation and tools from digital humanities (data-mining and geospatial visualization) to map the transnational contours of The Kominas’ self-made community.