It’s not the usual news coming out of Palestine, nor the usual voice your hear. Slingshot Hip Hop is a film by New York based artist and filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum. Jackie wasn’t always a filmmaker though. 4 1/2 years ago she was just a girl going to visit her family in the West Bank. Before leaving on her trip she had become aware of DAM, a Palestinian hip hop group made of of three young guys living in Lyd, Israel (also known to many Palestinians as ‘48 – since this is the land that became Israel in 1948).
Jackie, an American-born woman whose family is Palestinian and Syrian, was both curious and excited. Palestinian hip hop? Who were these guys? Were there more groups like them? At the time, the answer was no. It was just DAM made up of Suhell Nafar, his brother Tamer Nafar and friend Mahmoud Jeri. At first they rhymed in English, having never heard anything other than American hip hop. Their heros, Public Enemy, Tupac, NAS were all that they knew and didn’t think to try a song in their own language. Luckily, the thought struck them and now their songs are mainly in Arabic, a language that lends quite well to the artform. Not only had they developed linguistically but after the first intifada – or uprising – in 2000, DAM became political. Their words songs went from fun jams for parties to strong messages for Palestinians living under occupation.
Their songs help to bridge the physical divide between ‘48 Palestinians and those living in The West Bank and Gaza – the two Palestinian territories occupied after the 1967 War. Unable to visit each other freely and experiencing different aspects of occupation, there was a need for something, anything, to help the Palestinian people feel that they were still connected. Hip hop was one such way and “Meen Erhabi” (Who’s the Terrorist) was just the song to kick it off.
The intifada reminded the ’48s, the West Bankers and the Gazans that they were one. More importantly, it gave some of the younger generation a living situation that was in dire need of self-expression. It gave new meaning to the term, “publish or perish.” Make art or wither away. Express yourself or keep it bottled up inside until it eats you. Other groups came out of this environment, many of which were aided after hearing DAM’s recordings. PR (Palestinian Rapperz) from Gaza, Mahmoud Shalabi from Akka – Northern Israel, and female hip hoppers Lyd-based Abeera and Arapeyat a duo also from Akka.
“Slingshot Hip Hop” is an in-depth look at these groups and what they mean for the Palestinian people who embrace them. Art, a form of resistance, seldom comes to mind when Westerners hear the word “Palestinian” yet these groups are offering a different way of expression to the younger generations. They are offering hope and alternatives to armed resistance and a life of drugs. They are heros to young kids who hear them when they speak at their schools and see them on the streets in their towns.
“Slingshot Hip Hop” is not only entertaining, it is important. The film gives an alternative view of Palestinians and Palestinian life, one that all Westerners could benefit from.
