Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900

5. Transgressing Borders with Palestinian Hip-Hop

82 5 Transgressing Borders with Palestinian Hip-Hop Janne Louise Andersen As fifteen-year-old rapper Hussam Ikbarey enters the studio Taht al-Ard (Underground ) in Nazareth, he looks all teenager—tall, skinny, and shy. “Hussam, spit the Tech N9ne [pronounced Tech Nine] track you memorized,” his producer, Anan Kseem, says, referring to the American rapper from Kansas City—one of Hussam’s favorites. Hussam’s blue eyes focus and he starts rapping. There are no pauses, no hesitation ; he knows the lyrics by heart—or he has memorized the sound of the words, because Hussam’s English is very limited, and in reality most of it is gibberish to him. But his flow and delivery are incredibly tight. Anan watches his novice with eyes full of acknowledgment and affection. “There are twenty guys like Hussam, but none as dedicated,” he says. Hussam’s journey into hip-hop brings Anan back to his own when he was Hussam ’s age. More specifically, it brings him back to a mild October night in 2001 in downtown Nazareth. The hip-hop group DAM is performing its first show on an outdoor stage in the city center—and the place is packed. The crowd in front of the stage is mostly young, and among them are Anan and his friend Ala Bishara, both sixteen and full of expectations. They are about to see their first hip-hop concert performed in Arabic, and as the three rappers start rapping and the audience absorbs their vigor, it’s as if a beam of light from the sky hits Anan and Ala. “Hip-hop—"arabī [Arabic hip-hop],” Tamer calls out. “Hip-hop,” he repeats and points his microphone toward the crowd—“"arabī!” Anan and Ala scream back with the rest of the audience. Transgressing Borders with Palestinian Hip-Hop | 83 And just like that, in that one concert Anan’s life changed. From that day on, Anan had DAM’s music on repeat on his stereo along with 2Pac, Public Enemy, and Notorious BIG. In school in Nazareth, Anan scratched DAM’s lyrics into a wooden table with a ruler. And as he changed classrooms, he insisted on bringing that same table with him. The words kept flowing out of his pen; he was determined to be a mic controller, an MC. So together with Ala and Adi Krayem, who had also been at the concert, they joined We7—Wlad el 7ara (Boys from the Hood, pronounced walād al-. hārah)— and five weeks after DAM’s concert, We7 had their first show. “Our generation, we were in need,” Anan explained to me in an interview in February 2012. “We needed something new to be someone special.” The Music of Movement Ten years later, Anan, now twenty-seven, is still a member of We7, a music producer , and the founder of the music label Taht al-Ard. I hadn’t seen Anan in more than three years, when he took part in a hip-hop project I managed at the Sabreen Association for Artistic Development in 2008–2009. He and We7 performed along with other Palestinian hip-hop artists on tours we organized around the West Bank. Anan and his counterparts Saz (aka Sameh Zakout, from al-Ramleh, the first Palestinian rapper to produce an album) and the Danish Egyptian rapper Figure 5.1. DAM performing at The Shrine, Harlem, New York City, as part of a US tour in 2011. Photo by Janne Louise Andersen. 84 | Janne Louise Andersen Zaki taught interested teenagers in the West Bank the basics of hip-hop: writing lyrics and practicing flow, delivery, and performance. The summer program stretched over five weeks and took place in Shoufat Camp in Jerusalem, Dheisheh Camp in Bethlehem, Jenin Camp in Jenin, and Balata and Askar Camps in Nablus. During that time, Anan and Saz had to return to their hometowns every now and then, and for every camp they had to plan a new route using new means of transportation. To get to Jenin and Nablus, Anan could use the checkpoint by Tulkarem, which is situated on the Green Line in the middle of the West Bank. From here he had to take a taxi to Jenin or Nablus. But to reach the southern camps, he had to take two buses to get from Nazareth to East Jerusalem—a two-hour drive—change to a Palestinian shuttle bus to...