Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900

4. Identity, Diaspora, and Resistance in Palestinian Hip-Hop

69 4 Identity, Diaspora, and Resistance in Palestinian Hip-Hop Randa Safieh The Inception of Palestinian Hip-Hop Since the late 1990s Palestinian hip-hop has developed as a national and cultural phenomenon. Politically charged hip-hop, with its spirit of resistance, has become the soundtrack for pro-democracy movements around the Arab world, from the streets of Palestine and Tunisia to Cairo. Palestinian hip-hop artists today are recounting the Palestinian cause and struggle via their art, telling the story of a people whose existence and history has long been denied and neglected. Many Palestinian artists today are creating politically charged music as a significant factor in the construction, preservation, and assertion of their identity and as a tool for resistance against Israeli oppression, while also paying respect to, and drawing upon, traditional Palestinian musical influences. This essay investigates the role of hip-hop in the assertion of a Palestinian cultural identity among artists within Palestine and the diaspora, through a study of their themes and messages emerging in their music.1 The Development of Palestinian Hip-Hop: From the Bronx to the West Bank and Back Again The hip-hop scene in Palestine is primarily divided into three locations: Gaza; the West Bank, including Jerusalem; and the area that became Israel after 1948. DAM, a three-piece collective from al-Lid (Lydda) in pre-1948 Palestine, are pioneers of the Palestinian hip-hop movement, beginning in 1998. The movement 70 | Randa Safieh did not emerge without struggle: economic limitation, travel restrictions, and even opposition from Islamic groups have all posed obstacles for hip-hop artists. Palestinian sound artist and hip-hop producer Basel Abbas describes the Arab hiphop scene as being as “diversified (or fragmented) as Arabs themselves are. It expresses as much frustration, polarization and diversity as Arabs themselves enjoy and suffer” (2005, 42). The Palestinian American hip-hop artists discussed in this essay are Will Youmans , who performed as a hip-hop artist between 2000 and 2006 under the stage name the Iron Sheik; Excentrik, a hip-hop producer/composer; the Philistines, a three-piece collective consisting of two Palestinian American brothers, Ragtop and B-Dub, along with Cookie Jar, who is of Filipino origin; Fredwreck, who has obtained huge commercial success as a hip-hop producer, having worked with artists such as Xzibit, Snoop Doggy Dog, and Mack 10; and one non-Palestinian outfit, the NOMADS. The NOMADS started their hip-hop career as a Syrian-Sudanese duo (Omar Offendum and Mr. Tibbz) and have collaborated with Palestinian hiphop artists expressing a trend within Arab American society to identify with the Palestinian cause as the root of America’s collision course with the Arab world.2 As a result of the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, approximately eight hundred thousand Palestinians were expelled from their homes and have formed a global diaspora. Part of those relocated to America, which is now home to a large Palestinian community of more than three hundred thousand spread across the nation.3 Approximately half of the Palestinian population in the United States arrived in the late 1960s after the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Ideologically, Palestinian hip-hop, both in Palestine and in diaspora discuss many of the same subjects. Arab Americans (Arabs who were born or raised in America and usually have obtained American citizenship) convey their identity as Arab Americans and also as minorities through their artistic names, music, symbols , and political activism (Youmans 2007, 1). What distinguishes Arab American hip-hop from other genres of hip-hop is that it blends hip-hop culture with Arab American identity. There is, however, an important distinction between Arab American hip-hop and Palestinian Americans in hip-hop. Arab American hiphop refers to hip-hop created by Arab Americans who express their identity as Arab Americans through the use of the Arabic language, symbols, images, and Arabic musical influences (4). Palestinian American hip-hop emerged as a conscious way of establishing an alternative identity formation. Young Palestinians living in America are also “faced with two Americas, white and black, many young Palestinians now identify more with the latter” (Weir 2004). Hip-Hop and “Glocalization” Hip-hop has been appropriated in different contexts to represent the causes adopted by ethnic minorities. It has also been employed as a tool for youth protest and to Identity, Diaspora, and Resistance in Palestinian Hip-Hop | 71...