brooklyn to palestine

Last month Lyra and I went to see DAM perform at Southpaw here in Brooklyn. For those of you not up on your Middle Eastern political hiphop scene, DAM is probably the best-known Palestinian hiphop crew--a trio of Palestinian citizens of Israel who rap in Arabic (and occasionally Hebrew and English) about resistance, justice, and (be)longing. Their songs take on topics like the drug-ridden deprivation of their hometown Lod, gender discrimination in the Arab community, the occupation and the separation wall, love affairs gone awry, and the beauty of the Arabic alphabet. The rapid-fire rapping is layered with doumbek beats and borrowings from classical and popular Arabic musics--and the occasional touch of reggae.

The concert brought out an unusual crowd for Southpaw, which is not normally known for the presence of women in hijab, and where kufiyahs are more usually seen wrapped round the necks of pallid hipsters. DAM didn't get onstage until late (note to the Palestine/Israel Education Project, which hosted the event: I love y'all, but the many opening acts started to feel like overkill....) But when they did, they were electric: certainly of the best live hiphop shows I've seen. I've been listening to their new album Dedication a good deal in the subsequent weeks.

DAM's myspace page has some great selections, and here's the video (made in Ramallah) for their song "Ya Sayidati", which has been in heavy rotation in my ears:



"Ya Sayidati" is a love song, but DAM is still best-known for their political work, like the song "Min Irhabi?" (Who's the Terrorist?) and others like "Born Here" and "Mali Huriye" (We Don't Have Freedom). The video for "Born Here" (helpfully subtitled) featuring Abir el-Zinati, channels the protest-song sentiment in their music:



I first became acquainted with DAM's music via the trailer for Jackie Salloum's documentary Slingshot Hiphop: the Palestinian Lyrical Front, which I'm delighted to discover is finally going to premiere at Sundance in 2008. I remember watching the old trailer in the computer room at St. Antony's, back in 2005, and have been waiting to see the full documentary ever since. The website promises a new trailer is coming, but here's the old one in the meantime: