| January 2009 - Focus |
| January 2009 |
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Dropping the Beat, Syrian Style Words Richard Cozzens
Jamus is a member of Laji’in al-Rap (Refugees of Rap), one of the rap groups in Syria’s small but growing hip hop scene. While Syria’s rappers and break-dancers sometimes disagree about the nature of hip hop, they all claim that what they are doing is distinct from its American inspiration and that it offers them a unique means of self-expression. Hip hop culture, which includes rapping and break-dancing, has spread from its roots in New York City in the late 1970s to countries all around the world. A unique hip hop scene is emerging in the Arab world and Syria is part of the trend. Young rappers and break-dancers now hail from all of Syria’s major cities: within Damascus they come from a variety of backgrounds and neighbourhoods. Jamus and his group, which includes his younger brother Muhammad, often meet in a small bedroom in his parents’ house in the Damascus suburb of Yarmouk. Gathered around a desktop computer, they record test tracks, discuss their plans for the future and sip sweet tea. On the other side of Damascus near Abbassiyin Square, members of the collective Sham MCs (Damascus MCs) can be found in a basement studio, improvising freestyle lyrics in Arabic for each other over a looped beat. And far to the south in a basement gym in Saida Zeinab, a group of young men stay up late on weekends practicing their break-dance moves, spinning and vaulting themselves by their hands across the mats. Although his chosen form of expression is not verbal, break-dancer Ayman al-Dali, 19, still finds in it a means of release. “When I’m break-dancing, I feel like I own the universe,” he said. “Whether I’m sad or happy, annoyed or despairing, I just have to dance and I forget whatever I’m feeling.” Talking from the heart Badi Issa, 21, a rapper and composer in Sham MCs, was first exposed to hip hop in the sixth grade when a friend showed him an Eminem music video. “It blew my mind,” he recalls. “I couldn’t understand English at the time, but I could see that he was talking from the heart. I felt as if the song had been translated for me, even though I didn’t understand a single word.” From that day onwards, he was infatuated with the sounds and style of American hip hop, albeit in a way he now views as immature. “When we first started to listen to rap, we didn’t have a map to direct ourselves,” he said. “Everything that they did, we did.”
As rappers like Issa were rethinking their approach to hip hop style, they also began to rethink the content of rap music in Syria. Issa contends the Sham MCs are now trying “to do something for us, for Syria, for the youth of Syria, for the land of Syria – something that has an identity of its own”. Syrian rap for Sham MCs means songs with original beats that have roots in Arab music and lyrics that treat issues relevant to people here. A song might address a topic such as the difficulties of relationships in Syria or a universal issue such as the passing of time. Because they don’t want to limit their audience in any way, Sham MCs also perform songs in English that appeal to fans of American rap. The members of Laji’in al-Rap also assert a local style but label it differently. “There is no such thing as Syrian rap,” Jamus said. “There is just Arab rap that is not divided by nationalities.” This is not a surprising position from a group whose members are Palestinian, Syrian and Algerian, although they have all grown up in Yarmouk. “In the end, we want to bring Arabic rap to the whole world. We don’t want to reach them in English. We want the world to hear our songs and wonder, ‘What are these guys talking about? What is important to them?’” Arab rap as defined by Laji’in al-Rap contains songs that have meaningful topics – poverty, Palestine or violence in society – and local relevance. Regardless of what they name it, rappers in Syria do not intend hip hop to be a rebellion against their parents’ generation. “We’re striving to attract older people as well by discussing issues relevant to adults,” Ayham Nadir of Laji’in al-Rap said. Issa of Sham MCs has an even more ambitious dream: that rap in Arabic will become mainstream music. “We hope that one day when someone asks a Syrian what he listens to, he will respond, ‘I listen to George Wassuf, Fairuz and Sham MCs.’ There should be nothing strange about that.” Getting the word out For the time being, however, rappers in Syria are concerned with the task of getting people to listen. This is not easily done in a country with no music industry to speak of and in which piracy is the standard means of distribution. Rappers record their albums at their own expense and songs spread through word of mouth, the internet and small-scale distribution. Because there are no sponsors to support legitimate concerts, occasional performances are limited to nightclubs. Rappers and break-dancers work day jobs, study at university or serve in the military, circumstances that make it difficult to find the resources to practice, record and perform.
Despite these concerns, nightclubs are where hip hop performances are presently demanded. During last month’s Eid al-Adha holiday, Laji’in al-Rap performed some songs between DJ sets at a popular club in Mezzeh. While the group waited to go on, Jamus sat silently at a table watching the small but energetic crowd dancing to the pounding beats under flashing strobe lights – a far cry from his bedroom in Yarmouk. When their turn came, the group stood by the dance floor and charismatically performed. The crowd of young clubbers, nodding their heads to the beat and raising their hands in the air, responded most enthusiastically to the songs that resembled American rap and included scattered lines of English. Creating a space in Syrian society for hip hop as a legitimate form of self-expression will be no easy task for young rappers and break-dancers. According to Jamus, however, hope lies in people hearing their lyrics. His father used to think that his sons’ hobby was a waste of time until he happened to hear a song of theirs about Palestine. “Before, he thought rap was just drugs, guns, and nightclubs,” Jamus said. “But after he heard the song and listened to the words he began encouraging us and now asks, ‘What have you been working on recently?’” Sham MCs’ music can be accessed at www.myspace.com/shammcs and Laji’in al-Rap’s site is www.myspace.com/laj2ealrap. |
If you ask Damascus rapper Yasir Jamus, 21, why he’s chosen to practice and perform such a typically American music genre, he will answer by challenging the question’s premise. “Sure, rap is from America, but we’ve done something here,” he says. “We’ve imported the idea and edited it; we’ve applied it to ourselves and to our own situation.”
As Issa started to write his own lyrics in Arabic, he began to question whether sagging trousers were part of the message of rap and he now rejects the idea that “putting on a backwards hat makes you a rapper”. While some of Syria’s rappers dress in a style that identifies them as rap-jiye (fans of rap music), many are indistinguishable in appearance from any typical young Syrian.
Even more challenging is the problem of perception. Most Syrians see hip hop as teenage silliness, an imitation of the West, or Satan worship rather than as a form of expression. “The word ‘rap’ has become associated with the word ‘nightclub’, though there should be no connection between the two,” Issa complains. Break-dancer Dali stays away from nightclubs because they give break-dancing a bad reputation. “In a gym you can be a respectable break-dancer,” he said.