“It’s a funny song, a sarcastic song about the struggle in Palestine,’’ says Tamer Nafar, who makes up DAM with his brother Suhell and Mahmoud Jreri. “It’s me and this beautiful woman, and we get to talk. It’s a love story; the delivery is not political at all.’’
But the metaphor is clear. “We really are stuck in this stinking situation,’’ Nafar says. “But they are going up and we are going down. They have their country and their existence, and we don’t have ours.’’
Balancing message and entertainment, reality and humor, has been a DAM specialty since the group formed in 1999, a precursor to the wave of hip-hop acts that have sprouted more recently not only in Israel and Palestine but across the Arab world, many coming to notice in the recent upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere.
“Someone said our show is like the son of Chuck D and ‘South Park’,’’ Nafar says. “We talk to the crowd, we have fun. People laugh. You don’t see people waving flags at our shows, all the expected stuff. But of course we deliver the message as well.’’
You don’t need to know Arabic; watch the videos for some of DAM’s songs and the images of walls, checkpoints, bulldozers, settlements, cleared olive groves, refugees, and rubble make the message plain.
The members of DAM grew up in and are still living in what Nafar calls the “Arab ghettos’’ of Lod, in Israel. They are featured in a 2008 documentary on Palestinian rap, “Slingshot Hip-Hop,’’ and they welcome visits by foreign artists - Nafar cites Erykah Badu as a recent guest.
“They’re just legends out there. They bring that iconic force, and they’re wonderful showmen,’’ says Mazzi, an Iranian-born MC from New Jersey who appears on tonight’s bill. Most recently, Mazzi joined Mansour, M-1, British rapper Lowkey, and other MCs and DJs on a 10-day tour performing and holding workshops with youth in Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Hebron.
