Front Page   << PREVIOUS - 7 - NEXT>>  Index Page   It's Bigger than Hip-Hop By Zein El-Aime of   Slingshot Hip Hop is more than a film. It’s bigger than hip hop. It is a movement of young Palestinians struggling inside Israel (inside 1948), in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, trying to live with dignity and creativity in the face of occupation. The documentary has traveled the world’s film festivals, received international awards, and in 2008 screened at Sundance. But perhaps the most important territory it has covered has been high schools, universities, refugee camps, and community centers—screened as a reflection and educational tool of life under occupation and creative resistance to it. Recently released on DVD, the film braids together the stories of young Palestinians as they discover hip hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. We meet the rappers from DAM, the first Palestinian rap group, and the R&B singer and rapper Abeer, who live in the town of Lyd inside Israel; PR, Palestinian Rapperz, from Gaza; the female group Arapeyat from Akka, and others, who tell their unique yet shared stories over original head-bouncing beats and beautiful samples of traditional Arabic music. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, they are stories of young people crossing the borders that separate them. New York-based artist and filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum is more than a director, as her work on Slingshot has helped birth and grow the Palestinian hip hop movement and in turn, the movement for Palestine. Taking a break from the screenings and traveling, Salloum sat down with Left Turn’s Zein El-Amine to talk about the birth of the film and the movement. Zein El-Amine: So how did this project start? How did you get the idea to do a film about Palestinian hip hop? Jackie Salloum: I made this music video for a class for the DAM song “Mein Irhabi” (“Who is the Terrorist?”), where I took images of the intifada, and I translated the words. I used images that have never been shown in the media here. A lot of the students who were critical of my other work on Palestine said that “this is great,” and I asked them “Why is this so great?” and they said that because hip hop comes from the heart—it’s not propaganda. So it’s something that they connected with immediately and wanted to hear more. A lot of people asked where they could get more information and told me that they had never seen images like that. There were also some Israelis that got angry and wanted to get into an argument with me. And that’s where the idea of the film came from. One of my professors came to me, and was like, “You should make a doc.” So I thought I would make a film. I had no experience in making films before. Me and my cousin Rumzi were going back and forth in 2003 to visit our family in the West Bank and I said, “Hey, while we are out there lets just make a film.” So we went out—no funding, nothing—with some cameras and bought some tapes. I had a friend who was from 48 and her sister knew Mahmood Shalabi from the town of Akka (Acre) who was with the group MWR. She said, “You should call him and tell him you want to make a film.” So I called Mahmood, and I told him “I want to make a film on the Palestinian hip hop scene.” He said, “Yeah we need a film, come on out! Just call us when you get here!” They were very welcoming, and we went to Akka, and that is where the film started – with that group. He was with MWR at the time and from there we met DAM, Arapeyat, and Abeer. Then I found out about rap in Gaza, because I was reading the forum on Arab.net and there was this rapper who wrote, “Hi I am a rapper from Gaza, if anyone wants to support me, here is my email.” It was Mohammed Al Farra from the group PR. I was like, “Oh my god, hip hop in Gaza!” Because I had only heard hip hop from 48 and little out of the West Bank. But out of Gaza? It was a voice you rarely ever hear because they are so disconnected from everybody; they are not allowed to travel out. In 2004 I was able to get into Gaza and document the first hip hop show. That is actually how the narrative of the story started: When I went back and forth between the West Bank, Gaza, and 48—and the rappers in 48 didn’t even know that there was hip hop in Gaza—I would film what was going on in Gaza and bring it back to them to watch what was happening in Gaza, and then they started a relationship with each other. I would get on the phone and I would say, “Here talk to each other.” So they started connecting because the Gaza rappers were influenced by the 48 rappers. DAM is what influenced PR to start rapping, but DAM didn’t know that, even though they were 45 minutes away from each other. So that’s what took over the story of the film. ZE: Can you talk about the evolution of DAM, in relation to the second intifada? JS: Actually it’s a common story of the 48er. You can see the effects of colonization when you go to 48. Their parents’ generation struggled and saw so much death and destruction and lost so many family members, that now that they are living in this place called Israel. They just want their kids to be able to survive. If you go out to protest, you will not be able to get a job, feed your family. So a lot of their parents’ generation became more apolitical and didn’t teach their kids about where they came from. A lot of the 48ers grew up going to schools that would only teach Zionist history cause they are not allowed to learn about Palestinian history. So they don’t even know where they come from. A lot of the Israelis use the term Arab-Israeli—they don’t use the word Palestinian. Palestinians in 48 grew up thinking of themselves as Arabs, as the kid you saw in the film who said, “but we’re Arabs” (as opposed to Palestinians). With DAM, it was the same thing because growing up, even though their father wanted to tell them about what was going on, they did not want to hear it because they knew that if you go down that road you will not get the car you want, the house you want, the clothes you want. But the second intifada changed everything. I should say that though they were not political in their music about the occupation, they were political with the social issues. They would talk about what was happening in the streets, the drugs, because they grew up in the ghetto; Lyd is a ghetto. That’s why hip hop started there, because Tamer (Nafar of DAM) saw a Tupac Shakur video and said, “Hey that looks like Lyd.” And when he looked up his lyrics he said, “Hey Tupac is from Lyd!” That’s why he said, “Maybe I should start doing that.” So Palestinian hip hop began there. Growing up in the ghetto, they talked about the drugs, violence, Arab-on-Arab violence—its just like Black-on-Black violence in the ghettos here. It’s the same narrative. They would talk about that in their lyrics but they weren’t talking about the larger issue, the root of it. Then the second intifada hit and there were uprisings in 48. Thirteen Palestinians with Israeli IDs were killed, so that opened the eyes of many Palestinians that were living inside Israel. With Tamer and DAM, they were like, “Hey, they could just kill us? They could do away with us?” And that made them get deeper into politics—why are they treating us as second-class citizens? That’s how it all changed for them. The second intifada also politicized a new generation, and what DAM, Abeer, and other groups are doing in the community with their music is very educational. They make reference to Palestinian poets, artists, musicians, and historical figures that they don’t learn in the books. The youth that are listening to this music are being exposed to who Handala is, to who Mahmoud Darwish is; they are helping shape the new generation. It’s pretty amazing how they changed Lyd itself, because before DAM and Abeer, the kids wanted to grow up to be drug dealers, because those are the ones that had the nice cars and the nice clothes. Then after DAM and Abeer started, they wanted to be like them. So they changed who the role models are. They started a clubhouse, and they do workshops with kids so they are not just hip hop artists that just go onstage and rap. They actually work within the communities to make change. ZE: It was obvious to me when you were working on the film, preparing it for Sundance, that it was going to break all these stereotypes and among them ones about Arab and Palestinian women. In Slingshot Hip Hop we see Arapeyat and Abeer being helped by others because they needed that assistance. In terms of those bands, where are they now? Were they able to go off on their own? JS: Well there are a lot more women performing now so it has grown. Arapeyat, their parents were very supportive and they did get slack from society but they did get support from other rappers. That’s what is great about the Hip Hop scene there, the male rappers are very supportive of the female rappers. Like Safa was just in Germany because she was in another film and they brought her out. And Abeer is still working on her album. For Abeer it was more challenging for her to perform and record because a while ago she had pressure from some relatives of hers that didn't like that a woman was performing and singing. But she's tough and kept doing it even though it made things harder for her. Now she's working on her album and performing a lot. ZE: The Album that she is working on, is it for a record company? JS: No, it’s an independent label. And she has a mix tape out. They are all struggling because they don’t have the finances to put together. DAM has a record out now and it took them ten years. The record label is Red Circle, and it’s in England because it’s very difficult for 48ers to get signed by Arab record companies because they are “Israeli,” because they have Israeli IDs. And they are not allowed to travel to certain countries because they are Israeli; they can’t go to Lebanon, they can’t go to Syria. So they’ve got it on both sides – Israelis won’t sign them because they are Arabs and Arabs won’t sign them because they have the Israeli IDs. So they got signed by a European label. Ironic. ZE: That is another thing that the film does, it gives you a different view of the 48ers, because the 48ers have a bad rap, not only in Palestine but in the Arab world in general. Another thing that the film shows is the difficulty that Palestinians have in different areas, the difficulty in meeting up. During those shots with the long waits at checkpoints, were you with them the whole time, and what was that experience like? JS: I was in many situations where I was filming those endless cars. It’s amazing what you take for granted here—when you are stuck in traffic for ten minutes you are like, “God!” In Gaza it’s amazing how patient Palestinians are. That’s one thing people outside don’t know: Palestinians are the most peaceful, most calm, most patient people I have ever witnessed in my life. Because if you put a New Yorker in that situation, they would be going around shooting people’s heads off. But Palestinians sit there, they are so patient, and they are so calm about it. I wanted to pull my hair waiting in line. The checkpoint between north and south of Gaza was terrible. Because Mohammed al Farra of PR lived in Khan Yunis, and the rest of the guys lived in Gaza City. So when Mohammed would want to come to the city to record or to do a show, he would have to sit at the checkpoint and you never know whether its going to be 15 minutes or seven hours or its not going to open for days. So we ran into that problem with filming many times, where I would go to Khan Yunis to film and we’d get stuck there for days, and we couldn’t come back to Gaza City because they closed the checkpoint.   >> 1 ,  2 >>   Front Page   << PREVIOUS - 7 - NEXT>>  Index Page Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.