What was even more interesting was just to hear the music. Listening to DAM was humbling of course–I understood about 1 word out of 50–but their website offers a great feature where you can listen to the songs in Arabic and read the lyrics in English. One show-stopper they did was to rap the Arabic alphabet–each letter got a few lines using only words that started with that letter– forwards and back. And they were just great performers–funny, gutsy, charismatic. They’re featured prominently on the documentary Sling Shot Hip-Hop, which everyone I talk to says is fantastic, and which has just been released on DVD (but I think its availability is still limited). I will be watching this film soon, hopefully, as several friends picked up copies at the show.
Homeland Hip-Hop
Had the great pleasure of seeing the Palestinian hip-hop group DAM live in Brooklyn last night (alongside the fantastic Rebel Diaz and many other talented artists). The show was a fund-raiser to send a delegation of Native American and Chicano youth activists to Palestine this summer; it was very interesting to me to hear the way in which US rappers from different ethnic backgrounds related their struggle against racism and oppression to that of the Palestinians.