THE LIBERATED CITY OF RAQQA SHOWS US THEIR CREATIVE SIDE. Raqqa (City): Apr 21, 2013 - Above is an impromptu hip hop performance by a local artist. The videos below are a re-enamcment of the Syrian Revolution so far …
A reenactment of the revolution, part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6:
Thanks @lkh0ja
فنّ البقاء - Art of Surviving-
Syrian ingenuity at it’s finest. This man makes everything from motorcycles, guitars, toilets and drum-sets out of shells and rockets fired at the residents of Douma (suburb of Damascus). His drink dispenser made of used rockets is so popular he cannot keep up with demand, he asks Assad to fire another 200 rockets at him so he can use them to make more.
Thanks @AmalHanano
A PROTEST IN THIS OFTEN SHELLED AND BOMBED NEIGHBORHOOD. Aleppo (Qadi Al Asker): Mar 20, 2013 - Despite the worst of the worst that was thrown at them by Assad, they still have the will to come out and protest and celebrate the eventual freedom of Syrians …
Thanks @LccSy
THE PROTEST MOVEMENT IS NOT ONLY STILL ALIVE AND WELL … IT’S THRIVING. Aleppo (Sukkari): Mar 19, 2013 - An absolutely beautiful, lively and uplifting protest in a miserable, destroyed and annihilated city. The people of Syria are the most determined people on Earth.
Another video of the same protest.
Thanks @NuffSilence
Seventeen members of his family have been arrested, but Yahya Hawwa still sings – and Syrian protesters have made his voice their own. Omar Shahid talks to the irrepressible voice of a revolution
Yahya Hawwa was five when his father and uncle were killed in front of him in Hama, Syria, in 1982. This was the era of Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, whose forces are believed to have massacred 20,000–40,000 Syrian citizens. The memory left an indelible scar on Hawwa – now 36 and dubbed the “singer of the Syrian revolution”.
It is a title that comes at a wretched price: 17 members of Hawwa’s family were arrested late last year; one was killed, and until recently Hawwa was on the ministry of the interior’s “wanted” list. “Before the start of the revolution, all the things I sung about were either for children or spiritual songs,” he says from his home in Amman, Jordan, where he has lived for several years. “It was not until the Syrian revolution kicked off that I felt great pressure to sing about it.”
He and his mother fled from Syria to Saudi Arabia after his father was murdered. His father and uncle were market traders, selling fruit and vegetables; their crime was that they had a brother who was a leader in the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, and an outspoken critic of the Syrian regime. “Whenever the Muslim Brotherhood did something against the government, the government would target 10 to 20 members of a family. My father and uncle were in a mosque near their home,” Hawwa says.
Classically trained in Qur’anic recitation, Hawwa also borrows from western traditions; the instrumentation of his songs is often minimal, relying more on his powerful voice. In the space of two years, he has written 30 songs. The revolutionaries chant his lyrics before they go out to protest – even before they are “martyred”, he says. Arguably the most potent of these is Hawwa’s Going to My Death. “The song touches many mothers,” he says. They’ll sing it as they bid farewell to their sons and never see them again.”
Threats were communicated via his family in Syria after he released the song Traitor, a reference to the president. (“The traitor is the one who kills his own people,” Hawwa sings, a refrain also chanted by the revolutionaries.) “Shabiha [thugs working for the regime] told my family that if they got their hands on me, they would slaughter me.”
Other popular lines have been turned into slogans, too: “Oh mother I am going to my death/ The jasmines of Syria, I will talk about you/ Do not cry, do not cry/ We are coming to the [presidential] palace, we are coming to the palace!”
Last year, Hawwa was one of a number of acts to tour the UK on behalf ofHuman Appeal International and Syria Relief, on a bill topped by the 31-year-old Lebanese-born singer Maher Zain. Shows in Manchester, Birmingham and London raised £1m.British musician Saif Adam, who also performed, says: “The UK coverage [of the Syrian revolution] has been limited. Some songs can pull people through bad times.”
“The role of music in the Syrian revolution has been profound,” Hawwa says. “It has served two main roles: on the ground, it has rallied the revolutionaries and encouraged them. And outside Syria, it has shed an artistic light on what’s going on there.”
Indeed, Hawwa is just one of many musicians playing his part in bringing down the regime. Omar Offendum, 30, is a Syrian-American hip-hop artist based in Los Angeles. His track #Syria, released in March 2012, went viral on release; it’s an eloquent, vociferous attack on Assad’s regime.
“My father’s family is from Hama, which was destroyed in 1982,” Offendum says. “But nobody heard about it because there were no camera phones and no YouTube. Now, seeing it happen again sends shivers down my spine. The fact that the barrier of silence has been broken is a triumph in and of itself to people like me. To see a generation of people who can finally rise up and speak is powerful. I knew it was only a matter of time until the revolution would come back to Syria.”
Inevitably, social media has played a huge part in this revolution. “Compared to the first massacre in Hama, this time, any small or big thing is recorded and posted all over the internet within hours,” Hawwa says. “The music of the Syrian revolution is an oral history of events – it documents the revolution for future generations.” Late last year, crossing through Turkey’s borders, Hawwa was able to visit Syria for the first time since he fled as a child, despite trying on many occasions. He says that he has been warned, throughout his life, even before he began singing about the revolution, that if he returned he would face prison – which, according to Hawwa, is tantamount to death.
“The regime is devilish and tyrannical,” he says. “They have no legitimacy: 70% to 80% of the people don’t support them.” When does he expect it to end? “I’m sure before 15 March, which will be exactly two years since [the revolution] started. That is when I’ll finally be able to return home. It’s a coincidence: that’s my birthday, too.”
The people of Syria have been forgotten by the world … they might as well be on the Dark Side of The Moon.
A brilliant poster from Kafranbel, Idleb (Syria)
THE NARCICYST - LEAP OF FAITH
Download #LeapOfFaith EP:https://soundcloud.com/thenarcicyst/sets/lof
Download #LeapOfFaith Song:https://soundcloud.com/thenarcicyst/02-leap-of-faith
Jose, aka @MarquisMontes, comes through with his second Narcicyst collabo for his recently released Leap Of Faith EP and collaborative project.
With Narcy opening up the vaults to his music, Jose took the concept of the positive vs. the negative in the dance of life, and created an interpretive visual art piece merging his vision with the title track off the EP.
With leaps, sing language and interpretive dance, this video attempts to show the delicate balance between making out from struggle, and releasing out of it.
THIS IS SYRIA. THESE ARE IT’S PEOPLE. THIS IS HOW SYRIANS SEND OFF THEIR MARTYRS. Damascus (Jobar): Dec 19, 2012 - The martyr is a boy. His name is Majd Ibn Ayman Al-Hamwi, he was shot dead by Assad’s forces in this town outside of Damascus.
This funeral / protest shows that after all the brutality that Assad has inflicted upon the people of Syria, they are still as defiant as ever. They sing “He who kills his people is a traitor” - in reference to Assad’s forces.
His classmates, family and neighbors give him a final send-off. This is not a traditional Syrian burial-ceremony, however, since the revolution began, the people of Syria have found it necessary to mourn and celebrate each martyr, all 45,000 of them, in this fashion. Lately we have not seen many funerals like this as the violence has been so brutal that there has been only just enough time to take the bodies and drop them in a grave shortly after death.
Thanks @ANA_Feed
When Tunisians took to the streets in December 2010, on the lips of many of the protesters - alongside the name Mohamed Bouazizi, whose act of self-immolation was the catalyst for the revolt - were the words of Hamada Ben Amor, then just 21 years old. Otherwise known as the rapper El Général, Ben Amor’s song Rais Lebled (Head of State) had been posted online weeks earlier and its angry lyrics, speaking out against corruption, poverty and the then president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, captured the mood.
With Ben Ali stepping down in January of last year and Rais Lebledpicked up by the crowds in Tahrir Square searching for an anthem, El Général quickly became something of a celebrity. Later that year, Timemagazine included him in its annual list of the world’s most influential people.
The influence of El Général, and Arab hip-hop in general, on the Arab Spring has since been well covered by journalists looking for a sideways or artistic angle on the issues behind the conflicts that are still raging today. But finally, thanks to a group of filmmakers based in Qatar, there’s now a feature-length documentary dedicated to the subject.
Lyrics Revolt, which premieres tonight at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, features performances and interviews with 15 rappers from across the Gulf and North Africa, including El Général. The film is the work of four recent graduates of Northwestern University of Qatar: Shannon Farhoud, Melanie Fridgant, Rana Khaled Al Khatib and Ashlene Ramadan. Together they have founded Torath Production and Lyrics Revolt is their first co-directorial effort.
“We originally made a 30-minute documentary about hip-hop artists called Broken Records, which was screened on National Geographic and across the US,” says Al Khatib. This was before the Arab Spring. But once this exploded into the headlines and TV channels were discussing hip-hop, the women realised they had to do something.
“Everyone was talking about how hip-hop was affecting the Arab Spring and that people were noticing what they were saying in their music. We said to each other that we had to [add to] this and make a full-length documentary.”
Having sourced funding, the four headed off to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, spending about a week in each country, interviewing not just rappers but beatboxers, graffiti artists and breakdancers. In Tunisia they spoke to El Général, while in Egypt they caught up with the three-piece rap group Arabian Knightz.
“These guys were actually rapping in Tahrir Square and doing it freestyle so people could really listen to the lyrics,” says Al Khatib. “They were talking about social issues, things people talk about on the street every day, but doing it through an art form. And they were using poetry and a lot of Arabic techniques that people could really relate to it.”
The journey also saw the young filmmakers speak to the female Lebanese MC Malikah, who has performed across the region and now plies her trade in Dubai. They also met Omar Offendum, a Syrian-American rapper who was one of the musicians behind #Jan25, which was released just days before Mubarak stepped down and became another Tahrir anthem and racked up hundreds of thousands of views online. By and large, all of the artists rap in Arabic, with the occasional smattering of English.
“What we came to conclude was that Arabic hip-hop definitely did affect the Arab Spring,” says Al Khatib. “But also that the Arab Spring affected Arab hip-hop. They worked well together, but really it helped Arabic hip-hop become much more popular.”
The likes of El Général and Offendum were relatively unknown before the uprisings catapulted them to online stardom and Time lists. And just as the likes of Public Enemy rose to prominence by offering a highly politicised voice to the disenfranchised youth of the US in the 1980s, the emerging rappers of the Arab world are now doing the same, with potentially even bigger consequences.
“When I first heard of Arab hip-hop I just thought they were American gangster rap wannabes,” says Al Khatib. “But it really isn’t the same. They’re talking about real stuff. And I think it’s effective because it’s entertaining and it’s an art form that the youth can connect to. And, at the end of the day, it was the youth who started the Arab Spring.”
Lyrics Revolt screens at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival tonight at 7.30pm, followed by performances from several of the rap artists
While hip-hop in the West has evolved into a platform for radical political discourse juxtaposed with mindless party anthems, things are obviously a bit more complex in Syria. Centuries ago, Arabic poets held hijas, which were basically proto–poetry slams, and by extension, freestyle rap battles. But these roots never blossomed into much of a scene, mostly due to the constraints of the authoritarian Assad government. The lack of availability of decent tunes in the country is exacerbated by the fact that, in general, music is a touchy subject for Muslims (some interpret verses of the Koran as favoring a ban on music altogether). These extreme levels of censorship and sensitivity clash with the traditionally rebellious nature of hip-hop, and to violate them by recording a track with incendiary lyrics can be a deadly decision.
On July 4, 2011, the poet Ibrahim Qashoush’s body was found floating down the Orontes River, which flows through Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. According to residents, Qashoush’s vocal chords had been ripped from his slit throat. The poet was rumored to have coined the mantra “Yalla erhal ya Bashar,” or “Come on Bashar, leave”—a battle cry demanding the ouster of the familial regime that has ruled Syria for four decades. This slogan, along with the Arab Spring’s famous rallying cry “Al-sha‘b yurīd isqa-t. al-niz. a-m” (“The people want to bring down the regime”), has inspired both revolutionaries inside the country and Syrians living in exile around the world to support the resistance. One of the most interesting examples is LA-based rapper Omar Offendum, whose anti-regime track “#SYRIA” got so much attention that he won’t be able to visit his homeland again unless Bashar and his followers are overthrown.
Omar has deep family ties to Syria (his late father was a native of Hama, and his mother currently lives in Damascus) and identifies as a Syrian American, even though he was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Washington, DC. “I’m American for all intents and purposes, but I’m very much connected to Syria,” he said. Omar’s early lyrics consisted of the typical party fodder and other bullshit embraced by most young MCs. Then, while he was in college, 9/11 happened. “I realized really quickly that all of a sudden I had this microscope on me,” he said. “I went from just being another kid on campus rapping to ‘the Arab rapper’ or ‘the Muslim rapper’—people were questioning my Americanness after a show because I was against the war.”
For the next decade, Omar rapped about the many injustices in the Middle East and performed at fundraising events for Palestine and Pakistan. Then, last year, the conflict in Syria erupted, and he embraced the cause of the rebels as his own. His last visit to the country was in 2010, the same year he released his solo debut, SyrianamericanA. In 2011, he penned the one-off track “#SYRIA” and included the hashtag symbol in its title because “Syria was a trending topic more on Twitter than it was on any news site.” Its lyrics incorporated a powerful mix of recitations of the Arab Spring’s slogan and Qashoush’s chant, interspersed with lines like, “I have a dream the regime will fall/ And that what comes next will be better for us all.” Omar realized that releasing the track would jeopardize both his safety and that of his family back home. He only made it available to the public earlier this year, after his relatives in Syria gave him their blessing.
Omar had good reason to wait for their approval: The hip-hop scene in Syria is as sectarian as its politics, and the government listens to everything that’s released. The most famous rapper in the country is Murder Eyez, an Aleppo native who’s landed on Assad’s bad side in the past but now rhymes in support of the president. His competition includes Eslam Jawaad, a Syrian-Lebanese MC who lives in London and whose stance is also pro-regime.
Some might say it’s odd that some Syrian rappers have subverted a genre that has traditionally taken an antiauthoritarian stance, but Omar can explain: “It’s always been assumed that hip-hop would be the mouthpiece for the street and the struggle, but then in Syria for the first time you had this unique situation where all of a sudden it was also being used by the regime—but not really by the regime, by people who felt that this regime was something to be proud of. To them, they were standing up to the world superpowers that they felt were against Syria.”
Omar, however, is not alone in his musical support of rebel forces. Artists like MC Roco and the band LaTlaTeh combine elements of hip-hop and Arabic music while gently challenging the current situation in Syria. “What’s interesting is that the overwhelming majority of the artists either had to go into exile because they were threatened by the government, or they just straight-up disappeared,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many people were jailed or disappeared. Every once in a while, they would hand-pick someone suddenly whom they would let get away with saying something, as a form of pressure release, maybe, and give off the impression that they were supporting the arts or the culture, but there were always lines that were drawn.”
While Omar acknowledges that rhyming about Syria from the sunny confines of LA is safer than doing so from within the country, he still receives plenty of death threats, especially online. And the potential danger of returning to his homeland isn’t the only thing keeping him away; the Syrian government formally notified him that he has been banned from entering its borders. “Until this stuff is resolved, I’m technically exiled even though I’m not really from there,” he said.
For now, artists like Omar and a few brave Syrian residents will continue to express their frustrations and political views through hip-hop, but what’s next for the country and the future of the art form there remains to be seen. Omar told me that he hopes he can return to Syria at some point in the future. “I love and cherish Syria, and insha’Allah [God willing], I’ll be able to go back and maybe have a house there and show it to my kids someday,” he said. “But right now, this is the reality of the situation.”
For an overview of the issues that have fueled the conflict in Syria, we recommend reading “Road to Ruin,” our condensed timeline of Syrian history, and “The VICE Guide to Syria,” a crash course on the country’s geopolitical, cultural, and religious complexities.
L.A. rapper Omar Offendum came of age in a hip-hop era filled with violent tales by artists like Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. But last year, the 30-year-old Syrian American discovered how truly dangerous hip-hop could be.
“I had to hold my tongue for a long time,” Offendum said of his song “#Syria,” a furious riposte to Syrian President Bashar Assad that he released in March. Although Offendum (he prefers not to use his real name to protect family) is hardly a superstar, the underground track still could have had devastating implications for family members still in Syria.
He released the single, based on a sampled recording from an anti-Assad protest, only after they safely fled. “I couldn’t release a song like that without their blessing. There was a Syrian American pianist who played at a protest rally in D.C., and his family in Homs was attacked by thugs.”
Over the last decade, Muslim and Arab American rappers like Offendum have used hip-hop to rail against American foreign policy in the Middle East and to document their own treatment at home amid post-9/11 backlash and paranoia.
Now the war in Syria is pulling Offendum’s music back to the country where his family was — and the culture still is — imperiled. Over the last two years, citizens’ street protests have been met with gunfire, torture and even darker atrocities at the hands of pro-Assad forces.
The urgency of Offendum’s older tracks about stereotyping and Western ignorance of the Islamic world suddenly paled against the threat of his family being killed and his ancestral country spiraling into civil war.
“A year and a half after [the protests], it’s a bloodbath,” Offendum said. The genial, imposingly tall MC grew up in Washington, D.C., listening toOutKast and Jay-Z and translating Langston Hughes’ poetry into Arabic. But now he’s figuring how to rhyme about a civil war.
“After doing so many benefits for Palestine, for Iraq, for Haiti, now I’m doing them for Syria,” he said over lunch in Hollywood. “But at the same time, it’s an amazing time to be Syrian — people are saying things that you haven’t heard there in 50 years.”
Offendum’s mike skills and activism helped land him nearly 16,000 Facebook fans and 8,000 Twitter followers, who have been more important to furthering his career than record sales or a label deal. He keeps an active social media presence posting pictures and stories from his tour travels to across the U.S., Europe and Middle East locales such as Qatar and Dubai.
His independently released 2010 debut, the full-length “SyrianamericanA,” is a potent mix of noir-soaked ’90s rap sounds laced with Islamic poetry (he switches between Arabic and English in ways familiar to Spanish-speaking Latin-American rap artists) and antiquated clips from Western documentaries on Syria. Offendum’s music reflects his vantage point between those worlds. It’s rooted in Syrian and Arabic identity while also navigating issues with an American outlook.
Across the nations of the “Arab Spring,” MCs like Tunisia’s El General have helped galvanize youth to revolutionary action and documented conditions on the ground. But activists there and in countries such as Libya and Iraq can face brutal reprisal from governments and militants for speaking out.
As an American in L.A., Offendum can rhyme with relative safety. He’s not fighting in the revolution, but he feels he must use his music to help explain what’s happening — both to America, and to himself. In “#Syria” he uses hip-hop taunts to rail against Assad: “Second guessing the protesters / Was a recipe for Assad to address his own doom. … Look who’s got you shook / Doctor don’t know how to act now.”
Maher Hathout, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, has been a mentor of Offendum’s and empathizes with the rapper’s struggle to write about something so immediate and difficult as war, especially when Offendum is unsure of his own place in it.
“I sympathize with him, when you’re so preoccupied it’s hard to suppress that,” Hathout said. “But Omar is very consistent. He feels the pain of the people and his heart’s in the right place, but he’s never claimed to be physically participating in the conflict. His contribution might be even more important — creating awareness.”
Offendum was born in Saudi Arabia after his family fled the previous Assad regime. After moving to America in 1985 (he became a naturalized citizen in 1993), he attended a cosmopolitan Islamic school in D.C., where he met other recent immigrants as well as local Muslim American children. It was an experience, he said, that helped him form a pan-Arab identity growing up. At the same time, he discovered American hip-hop and began noticing subtle allusions to Islamic culture in some of his favorite songs.
“When Jay-Z and Timbaland sampled the Egyptian artist Abdel Halim Hafez for ‘Big Pimpin’,’ even my mom recognized that song,” Offendum said. “I knew I wanted to hear someone rapping about my issues, and once I got to college and 9/11 happened, I thought I could be that person.”
While attending the University of Virginia to study architecture, he crafted beats and rhymes in his dorm, and after moving to L.A. in 2004, he helped assemble a compilation of hip-hop tracks with peers like the Iraqi Canadian MC the Narcicyst and the American rap-underground figure Immortal Technique to benefit a documentary film on Palestinian hip-hop culture.
Offendum was a natural MC — charismatic and commanding, with authoritative riffs on the Sykes-Picot Agreement (which set many Middle Eastern borders after World War I) spliced with internal rhymes that evoke golden era greats like Black Star and A Tribe Called Quest.
The rapper freelances for an architecture firm alongside his tours, which often eschew the club circuit for college dates paired with guest lectures on Syria and Arab American culture. This month he performed at Soundscape in Anaheim and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His music was featured in a documentary about the Syrian conflict, “The Suffering Grasses,” screened at the Arab Film Festival at the Writers Guild Theater.
For Muslim American hip-hop artists like Offendum, the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya brought mixed emotions — joy, hope and nervousness about what comes next — as well as the pressure of being seen as spokespeople for the young Arab world.
“I fear that the, once again, temporary coverage of our musicians during this time of conflict will both pigeonhole the artist, the growing scene and the genre,” said the Iraqi Canadian rapper the Narcicyst, who has collaborated with Offendum. “As an Iraqi, it was very discouraging to see how the world forgot about Iraq, like it never happened. Unfortunately, the problem in Syria will not change with a song, or a movement; it is a deep-seeded issue that has proven deeper and more protracted than assumed.”
Even in Arabic and Arab American hip-hop circles, Offendum says he’s heard pro-Assad rap tracks that belittled the protesters as tools of the West, and some pro-Assad Syrian Americans tried to shut down his recent show in Cleveland (though the set went smoothly in the end). He admits to struggling with how to write about the war — “I’ve never been comfortable glorifying death and martyrdom,” he said.
He knows the revolution is a dominant event in his life, and his new music inevitably will reflect that. Yet Offendum’s L.A. life is far away from the street fights of the Free Syrian Army. He last visited Syria in 2010 and almost certainly would be detained if he tried to go back while Assad is in power. Yet media such as Al Jazeera have turned to him, as a Syrian American with a powerful voice on Syrian youth culture, to comment on the revolution.
Over lunch in at a vegan restaurant known for macrobiotic fare and earnest menu item titles like “I Am Present” and “I Am Elated,” Offendum admits he can only witness the Syrian civil war via secondhand news. But he’s drawing on the revolution to make music reflecting his own vantage point, and sending that sound across America and back to Syria with a message: We hear you.
“There’s a tradition of nighttime chants whenever someone came back from the Hajj [a religious pilgrimage to Mecca], where people would praise them with call-and-response and hand drumming,” Offendum said. “It’s freestyling, and now they’re singing about the revolutionaries.”
Syrian American Hip Hop Artist Omar Ofendum (@Offendum) discussing Syria in this month’s issue of ‘Islamic Horizon’s magazine.
SUDANESE SOLIDARITY WITH SYRIA! A TRULY EXCELLENT REGGAE TRACK BY A GROUP OF SUDANI’S WHO SUPPORT THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION.
Thanks @Offendum
HC4Syria Vol. 1 - Listen up & play it loud!
It’s finally here!
30 Punk & Hardcore bands from across the globe have united on Hardcore4Syria’s free online music compilation with one specific purpose: To help raise awareness for the humanitarian crisis in Syria and to share their powerful and motivational music and lyrics with the innocent victims there - and with you!
Dive in and get inspired by these bands, their songs, their music and their message!
We’d like to thank each and everyone of these bands for their support and contributions. The Syrian people will not forget your generosity and thoughts.
Now that’s Hardcore.. !
