May
Palestinian hip hop artists make music out of their misery
PHOTO: Palestinian hip hop group DAM performs at a party. From left to right, Tamer Naffar, Mahmoud Jreiri. Agnes Varnum, flickr.
Hip hop blasts and booms from the clubs young Americans frequent on weekends. Besides for dancing, however, hip hop and its cousin, rap, have served as ways to transmit political, cultural and societal commentary.
The Chicago Palestine Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center is showing the documentary Slingshot Hip Hop, a film that was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and offers a deep look at the lives of young Palestinian rappers. These guys and girls rap about the booms and blasts they experience on a regular basis.
The movie follows Palestinian rappers in the West Bank, Israel and Gaza. Although they are miles apart, they have never met each other and got to know each other via the Internet. The stark differences in their lives, even though they are all Palestinian, are fascinating.
The rappers in Gaza have to deal with the electricity going out in the middle of a recording session. DAM, a group from Lod in North Israel, struggles to get paid by their music producers. One girl rapper has had threats from family to cut it out, or else.
The next screening is on May 3 at 8:00 p.m.
