Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music

Massad, Joseph

doi:10.1525/jps.2003.32.3.21

Cited by 65 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…“ Zahrat al‐Mada'in ” was written in 1967 after the Arab‐Israeli war and the song was released after an arson attack damaged the al‐Aqsa Mosque in 1969. As Joseph Massad () writes, the song “vacillates between martial music, Byzantine Arab church hymns, and somber sentimentality” (p. 26–27). Fairuz opens with the lines, “It is for you that I pray/O city of prayers…” and the song celebrates the holy multireligious history of the city, concluding with the words, “by our hands the peace will return to Jerusalem.” “ Zahrat al‐Mada'in ” has served as an anthem for the city in the years since it was written, and the Palestinian Authority awarded Fairuz with the first Jerusalem Prize for Culture in 1998.…”

Section: Diasporic Reorientationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counterorienting the war on terror: Arab hip hop and diasporic resistance

Drury

2017

Journal of Popular Music Studies

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This article discusses Arab hip hop as a transnational genre produced out of a state of upheaval, resisting political and economic oppression. One impact of the 9/11 attacks was to make Arabs and Muslims increasingly visible in the US public, reflecting what Nadine Naber has termed a "diaspora of empire." Arab hip hop points to a unique nexus reflecting the web of cultural and economic realities in the 21st century. I argue that sampling practices, sonic layering, and linguistic play in Arab hip hop allow artists to enact geographic and temporal flexibility and facilitate a diasporic resistance that challenges public fear and repressive state discourse. "Somos Sur," a 2014 track from French Chilean artist Ana Tijoux's album Vengo, features British Palestinian hip hop artist Shadia Mansour and a syncopated maqsoum beat, associated with Arab folk dance, interwoven with semitones.The song is a paean to revolutionary resistance, uniting those who are "callados, omitidos, invisibles" (silenced, neglected, invisible). A rough translation of Mansour's Arabic verse reads: "Music is the mother tongue of the world/She supports our existence, she protects our roots/She joins us from greater Syria to Africa to Latin America." The YouTube video, which has over six million views as of this writing, features Tijoux celebrating with a crowd wearing bright indigenous Andean clothing. Mansour dances dabke, a Levantine folk dance, in bare feet and an embroidered Palestinian dress (see Figure 1). "Somos Sur" foregrounds an infectious brass line that mimics the mijwiz, a nasal double-reed instrument.Mansour's fierce delivery coupled with the instrumentation, rhythm, and quarter tonality convey "sonic Arabness," a term I use to refer to a set of aural markers that have become associated with Arab culture. Tijoux and Mansour harness an infectious and disruptive energy in their collaboration, hailing anticolonial alliances between Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, and illustrating what Nitasha Sharma (2015) has called "post-9/11 Brown." In a section that introduces Mansour's verse, Tijoux lists Latin American and African countries impacted by colonial rule, finally proclaiming "Yo te quiero libre Palestina" (I want a free Palestine). This line is punctuated with a cry of zaghareet, a ululation signifying communal joy. Mansour's Arabic verse is rapid and virtuosic and her vocal performance is commanding. Neither the Spanish or Arabic lyrics are translated to English, suggesting the primary intended audiences for the track are Spanish and Arabic speaking. Summoning what Jayna Brown (2010) called "buzz and rumble" referencing Congolese and Angolan musics, Tijoux raps, "This is not utopia/This is a joyful dancing rebellion." For Brown, buzz and rumble describes sounds that are created in dystopian landscapes of devastation and violence: "The buzz and rumble is the sound of the new space the music creates, the space people create out of necessity for their sanity…[it] is the power that rides through these circumstances; improvising...

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Section: Diasporic Reorientationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counterorienting the war on terror: Arab hip hop and diasporic resistance

Drury

2017

Journal of Popular Music Studies

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“…Unfortunately, this remains an under-studied area. With the exception of Joseph Massad’s 2005 essay, there exists no ‘major academic engagement with the overall history and the role of patriotic, nationalist, or revolutionary songs in the modern Arab world … nor with their role in the Palestine tragedy specifically’ (Massad, 2005: 176). This is beginning to change with the emergence of Palestinian rappers who have garnered scholarly interest.…”

Section: Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the same way cinema tracked political changes in the Palestinian landscape, music did too. Songs reflected popular sentiments and generated such sentiments, making the political internal to culture, ‘not epiphenomenal or subservient to the political, but … generative of political sentiment’ (Massad, 2005: 177). For example, 1970s songs often named and mapped lost villages, expressing nostalgia and functioning to continue the presence of specific geographies, thus playing a role in political resistance.…”

Section: Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine

Tawil‐Souri

2011

International Journal of Cultural Studies

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By drawing on scholarship that focuses on cinema and music, the author argues that the very act of ‘creating culture’ in the contemporary Palestinian period is a form of political resistance. Second, given political conditions of countering Zionist/Israeli erasures, the study of Palestinian culture is also a form of political resistance. The author argues that the resistance at the heart of the two ‘analytics’ of culture and cultural studies is imperative.

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“…Massad (2003) analyzed the songs in which lyrics served to maintain the collective experience and motivate individuals to resist Israeli occupation; it was a pragmatic way to utilize the entertainment avenue for the Palestinian cause. Some of the lyrics described the Palestinian child's experience under the Israeli oppression.…”

Section: Forms Of Palestinian Children's Political Resistance Reworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language of political socialization: language of resistance

Habashi

2008

Children's Geographies

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This paper discusses the notion of language as resistance for Palestinian children living in the West Bank. Drawing from the global/local language discourse, children constructed meaning of language that echoed the Palestinian political environment. The study examines the Palestinian children's language usage and language meaning as a method of political resistance, resilience and reworking. Children's conceptualization of language meaning emerged from discussion of the diversity of naming and strategies of resistance. Data for the study was drawn from the interviews of 12 Palestinian children (six females and six males) 11-13 years of age from cities, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank.

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Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music

Cited by 65 publications

References 67 publications

Counterorienting the war on terror: Arab hip hop and diasporic resistance

Counterorienting the war on terror: Arab hip hop and diasporic resistance

Where is the political in cultural studies? In Palestine

Language of political socialization: language of resistance

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