Glocalization of Popular Music: Exploring Religious Themes in the Iranian Rap

In this article, using glocalization, as a complementary or alternative term for globalization, we have studied religious themes in the Iranian rap music. Despite the globalization of rap music, we cannot say this music has been expanded with fixed western pattern around the world. Adolescents and young people around the world have created different rap music(s) that are influenced by their local cultures. In Iran, rap music both in the musical characteristics and themes, has been influenced by local culture. In one hand Iranian rap music has been influenced by global (Western) rap culture and on other hand it has been influenced by local (Iranian-Islamic) culture. We used Glock and Stark's model to study religious themes in the contemporary Iranian rap. This model describes doctrinal, intellectual, ethical-consequential, ritual, and experiential dimensions of religion. We used qualitative content analysis to explore the religious themes. Results show that religious themes in the Iranian rap music are part of local culture. Analyzing rap songs show that in doctrinal dimension, resurrection is the main theme. In ritual dimension, some Islamic behaviors and in experiential dimension, religious fears are of main themes. As summarized, Iranian rappers selected some limited dimensions of religion in their songs. According to our findings, in the Iranian rap music, no one has represented multidimensional religion.