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Hip-Hop, Palestinian Style Comes to Ramallah
Loading ...The first Palestinian hip-hop contest gives artists an opportunity to voice their views about life in Palestine.
The beat might be American, the message might convey in rapid vernacular the frustrations of those on the street, but in these hip hop tunes, the lyrics are all in Arabic.
On Thursday night, 50 groups and soloists from the West Bank and Gaza gathered to participate in HipHopKom, the first Palestinian hip hop competition, aimed at selecting the best up and coming Palestinian rap group. The event was broadcast simultaneously in Gaza City and the West Bank city of Ramallah, with the participants in either city able to watch each other via video conferencing and projection.
The 16 finalists were selected by an international panel of judges, including Palestinian rapper, Shadia Mansour, from London, Zaki from Denmark, Mazzi from the New York group S.O.U.L. Purpose, and Suhel Nafar, one of the founders of Da Arabic MC (DAM), the pioneering and leading Palestinian rap group. [Check out Deft's photos of DAM and various other artists here.]
Wearing baggy clothes and baseball hats in a style that wouldn’t look out of place in the rundown neighborhoods of New York or London, these artists may have dressed the same as other rappers, but they used the beat and the stage to voice objections all their own. In the shadow of the Israeli security barrier, climbing over the rubble, Rashed Al-Remawi, a member of the group Pikafi (‘Enough is Enough’) from El Bireh, said rap gave him the perfect way to protest Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
“We sing about our personal situation or about the political situation. We want to send a message to the world and to anyone who thinks that we, the Palestinians, are terrorists, and to show that Palestine is exactly the opposite,” Al-Remawi told The Media Line.
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