‘Music Is In Our Blood’: Gujarati Muslim Musicians in the UK

In the past, members of the Muslim Khalifa community in Gujarat (India) held a low position in the social hierarchy, a status closely bound up with two of their hereditary occupations, barber and musician. This paper examines changing Khalifa attitudes towards their previously stigmatised occupations now that they are a well-established and relatively successful community in the UK. While the connection with hairdressing is acknowledged and actively pursued, music making is an area of contestation, with competing claims that ‘music is in our blood’, and that music is not fully endorsed by Islam. Some of the implications of this for ‘Khalifa identity’ are examined.