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It cost me a lot to make it to Durango. By 5pm, most of my friends had bailed on the idea. Some were still hungover, some too lazy to make the forty-minute trip and a few others were wary of the political stability of the climate I was asking them to enter.
“It’s just a Palestinian hip-hop concert,” I said, but they didn’t believe me. I was beginning to wonder that if I had left off the word “Palestinian”, a few of them would’ve had a change of heart, but it was too late. I headed out into the abominable Bilbao rain alone and paid my arm in euros to catch the train to Durango. Luckily, I met up with another English teacher who I had never met before, but knew he was placed in Durango and thus, I was able to pester him into attending. Durango is small and therefore, there was literally nothing else to do that night – or any night, but to his credit, he was the perfect companion and genuinely interested – not afraid – of all things Palestinian.
Yet my travel difficulties were nothing in comparison to the effort that Palestinian hip-hop group, DAM (or Da Arabian MCs) had to make in order for their message to be heard. For MCs Suhell Nafar, Tamer Nafar, and Mahmoud Jreri, being born in the slums of Lod, a mixed Arab/Jew neighborhood 20km outside of Jerasulem, was just the start of their problematic lives, marked by an encroaching Jewish occupation.
“We had to take a plan from Palestine to Frankfurt to Bilbao and then get out here to Durango,” explained MC Tamer that evening. “So I guess that is my way of saying if we came this far, you all can at least come a little closer to the stage.” The people were hanging back a bit – like maybe they had wandered into the wrong place. And this was funny to me because the audience was compromised mostly of Basque nationalists – a sentiment that bears some similarity to the Israel-Palestine arrangement – yet an air of hesitation remained. There was the omnipotent language barrier, international stereotypes, and uncertainty over whether a sense of solidarity was easily translatable that needed to be overcome.
Fortunately, it only took a matter of seconds for the crowd to be convinced. DAM put on one of the best hip-hop performances I have seen and undoubtedly the one with the most powerful message. Their songs speak of love, loss, identity, occupation, abuse, struggle, and desperation and their voices are proud and distinctly Palestinian. They are not using weapons to ask for our understanding; they are using words, and because of this, more people are listening.
One of the most poignant moments of the concert was when DAM pulled out flash cards of the Arabic alphabet and attempted to teach the Castellano-Euskara speaking crowd how to talk in Arabic.
If you recall my last post on teaching English, I made the remark:
“Never let the difference in language become a barrier for understanding and getting to know the rest of the world. People can and do communicate without words every single day…When you want desperately to express yourself, you find a way and it is usually a method far more entertaining and memorable than speaking.”
The fact that I just witnessed a concert in Basque country where Palestinians were attempting to teach the Arabic alaphabet through hip-hop just a few days after I wrote that – is beautifully ironic. I wanted to share the moment with you here. The powers of music and the potential for cross-communication never cease to amaze me.
Image source: ahamedia.ca
Contributor Profile: Ashley
Ashley is a friend of anyone who is fighting the good fight for social change. She currently resides in Bilbao, Spain where she is teaching English and researching the history of the Basque conflict. Personal blog
Twitter: @socialearth
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