Rap the Casbah

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Features > May 9, 2008
Rap the Casbah
By Michelle Chen



For more than a generation, hip-hop has drawn kids from neighborhoods around the world into the musical intersection of street culture and political consciousness. Now that common ground is making a mark in one of the globe’s most conflict-ridden areas: the Arab world.

Tracing the breadth of the diaspora — from French streetscapes to Gaza slums — Arab youth are seizing hip-hop culture as a platform for self-expression.Dam, a three-member crew based in Lyd, a town outside Jerusalem, documents the bleak realities of segregation, violence and poverty under Israeli rule. (Their name means “blood” in Hebrew and “eternity” in Arabic.)

The group’s breakthrough protest anthem, “Min Irhabi?” (“Who’s a Terrorist?”), released in 2001, reverses a common ideological refrain: “You’re killing us like you’ve killed our ancestors/ You want me to go to the law? What for? You’re the Witness, the Lawyer and the Judge!”

In “Inkilab” (“Revolution”), Dam emcee Suhell Nafar warns “all the people of love and peace”: “How can we have co-existence when we don’t even exist? It takes revolution to find a solution.”

As political marginalization stokes hopelessness among Palestinian youth, Nafar says hip-hop’s mission is “to deliver the positive message, and to let the people know that they’re not terrorists, to let them know that they’re human beings.”

Nafar also notes that music can cross checkpoints and borders more easily than Palestinians can. “We can’t get into Gaza, or go to Nablus, or go to Syria,” he says. “But our music got there a long time ago. There’s no other way to connect.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3613/rap_the_casbah/