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7/18/2002 (12:46) |
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PHOTO:
http://pal.linefeed.org/uploads/a-rap.jpg
Palestinians air their views on life in Israel via hip-hop
By Jason Keyser
Associated Press
Above a gut-punching beat, four Palestinian rappers from Acre, Israel, unleash a volley of angst-ridden rhymes about poverty, drugs, crime and discrimination in Israel's Arab neighborhoods.
ELIZABETH DALZIEL/Associated Press
A new hip-hop generation: Palestinian rappers (from left) Charley Shaby, 25; Richy Shaby, 20; Wassim Akar, 22; and Mahmoud Shalaby, 20, record part of a chorus for a song in the town of Acre in northern Israel. Rap music has provided young Palestinians with a way to talk about the problems they face.
'Why are we living in a time without happiness and hope?' they sing in Arabic. 'When you're looking for a job they gonna fire you ... 'cause you're an Arab. ... Why can't we be equal?'
Rap music, born of inner-city poverty and the struggles of black Americans, has been adopted by youth around the world. For the increasingly embittered younger generation of Palestinians, it has become a new weapon of sorts.
About 20 percent of Israel's 6.5 million citizens are Arabs, descended from Palestinian families who stayed in Israel after its 1948 creation.
They have long complained of neglect by Israel's government, and 20 months of battles between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have added to the distrust between Israel's Arabs and Jews.
'There is a young generation that is impatient with the Jewish Zionist establishment,' said Sammy Smooha, a sociology professor at Haifa University. 'They lost the hope of making it in Israel. They are more militant than the previous generation.'
Rap, Smooha said, is a new twist on an old Arab tradition of passing down history and folklore through stories and music.
Wassim Akar, 22, heard something familiar in the lyrics of American artists like Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur. Three years ago, Akar and three friends - Mahmoud Shalaby and brothers Richy and Charley Shaby - started a group called MWR, the initials of the group's first three members.
In a cramped bedroom converted into a recording studio, Akar sings about Arabs he calls traitors for working as informers for Israeli police. 'We should be together; to help each other we have to be one hand,' the young hip-hopper sings in Arabic.
MWR and rappers in about five other Palestinian rap groups are working to put out CDs. They hope that, like black Americans, they can bring attention to their problems through music.
'They made a weapon,' 20-year-old Shalaby said of the American hip-hoppers. 'And with this weapon they fought until they got their rights. We don't want to go and drop some stones. We want, you know, to just drop our lyrics.'
Acre's 25 percent Arab minority, the biggest of any mixed city in Israel, mostly lives in the walled Old City, built atop the ruins of a Crusader town.
Its muddy alleyways and small Arab homes stand in contrast to the modern apartments that many Israelis began building after 1948 in the Mediterranean port city. The Arab high school is run-down, and its classrooms are bare.
Drugs come by sea from nearby Lebanon. And with drugs comes increased crime: A friend of the band, Yousef Khelaila, a small-time drug dealer, was gunned down last summer by a gang leader just out of jail.
Charley and Richy's mother, Madeline Shaby, 62, worries less about her sons getting involved with drugs now that they are busy with music. Still, she wonders if their anti-establishment lyrics might bring trouble from the police.
'I'm afraid,' she said. 'They are not afraid.'
Shaby, who says her family was forced to leave their home in Jerusalem in 1948, said music also helped heal her own wounds.
'Not rap,' she said with a laugh. 'We had our own music ... just for fun, to let us forget everything.'
But traditional Arabic love songs do little to soothe the younger generation.
Good jobs are scarce. The unemployment rate among Arabs in Israel is as high as 20 percent in some places. Young Palestinians complain about beatings and harassment from police.
It's the stuff of rap music. MWR's hit 'Because I'm an Arab' includes the words: 'A policeman sees me, immediately arrests me, asks me some racist questions, and why? Because I'm an Arab.'
The song topped the charts for two weeks on a Haifa radio station. A rap festival in Nazareth last year drew thousands of people.
Even some Jews are listening. MWR performed last month in Tel Aviv, where about 1,000 people, almost all of them Jews, bobbed their heads to the beat and cheered.
'It was powerful to sing Arabic in front of them,' said Charley Shaby, 25, the group's DJ. 'They listened. I don't care if they understand it or not. ... They understand the message.'
Published 7/16/2002
www.lsj.com/things/events/020716_arabrap_3d.html
ANGRY YOUNG MEN CAN UNLEASH THEIR RAGE WITH DEVESTATING RESULTS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE PURPOSELY BEEN DISCRIMINATED AGAINST.
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