Before Palestinian Rap Had a Name, DAM Was Already Making It

No Producers, No Beats, No Blueprint

When Tamer Nafar started trying to make hip-hop in the late 1990s, none of the infrastructure that would later support Arabic rap existed. There were no dedicated hip-hop producers to work with, only wedding producers, and beats were not accessible the way they are now.

Nafar formed DAM around 1999 in Lod, a mixed Palestinian-Israeli city, with his brother Suhell Nafar and Mahmoud Jreri. The group's name reads as an acronym for Da Arabian MCs and also means "blood" in both Arabic and Hebrew, a detail cited in nearly all coverage of them.

Giving Shape to Disillusionment

Reporting on DAM's formation consistently describes the group as a response to the constrained circumstances facing Palestinian citizens of Israel. Hip-hop, still largely unfamiliar in the region then, became the vehicle for subjects mainstream Arabic pop of the era did not touch.

A First for a Major Label

The persistence paid off commercially as well as artistically. DAM became the first Palestinian hip-hop act to release an album through a major label, signing with EMI Arabia for 2006's Ihda'. By then the group had built a touring profile well beyond Lod.

From the Stage to the Screen

Nafar's profile expanded further through film. He co-wrote and starred in Junction 48, a 2016 drama set in Lod's hip-hop scene that premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and won the Panorama Audience Award, extending his story to audiences who had never heard a DAM track.

An Unexpected Influence

Nafar has continued discussing his influences in later press, including a Rolling Stone feature on John Lennon's imprint on his songwriting, a somewhat unexpected reference point for an artist whose reputation rests on building a Palestinian hip-hop tradition that, when he started, had no name and no path already cleared.