Guest Letter from the editor: 2020 Music Edition
The following was originally published in Palestine in America’s 2020 Music Edition. Order a print copy or download a digital copy today!
Dear Reader,
I’m Sama’an, the guest editor for this special music issue of Palestine in America. I want to tell you a bit about where I’m coming from and how I got here before you dive in.
In my early teens, when our family had just graduated from dial-up to high-speed internet, the thing to do after school was to lock myself in my room to catch the top 10 video countdown on MTV or BET, and, when those were through, log into AOL Instant Messenger and fire up Yahoo’s music video player while my ADD and I battled over whether we were going to get any homework done that night.
This became a ritual for me, but only after a life-changing experience — the exact moment my taste in music began to form. I remember it vividly. I was 10 years old; my family was in Austin, Texas, visiting our cousins for Christmas. In an extended family full of so many women and girls, my cousin Yazan, four years my elder, was the closest thing I had to a big brother.
After dinner on this fateful night, we went up to his room, where I was looking forward to losing to him in my choice of NBA Live, Madden, or Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball. Having a choice made all the difference! He was the coolest person I knew, so going down 100-4 in Ken Griffey was an honor (it was actually more than that; the game stopped counting runs after 100). In his room, I grabbed a PlayStation controller like I always did, but his eye was instead on the CD tower next to his TV stand. He reached in front of me, pulled out a black CD case, opened it, and flashed the disc at me. All I saw was what I could now verily identify as: A Big. Green. Pot leaf.
“Whaddayou know about this?” Yazan asked.
Absolutely nothing. I knew absolutely nothing about the CD with the big green leaf on it. What was that leaf about? Was it a remix of “O Canada?”
I had so many questions, and all of them were answered when he said, “Don’t tell your parents,” and popped it into his very futuristic 5-disc CD changer stereo.
It was Dr. Dre’s album “2001” (confusingly released in 1999) and it started with the infamous THX “Deep Note” sound that we’ve all heard at the beginning of every George Lucas film. I didn’t know who Dr. Dre was, but he was making it clear that this was supposed to be cinematic. And it was. I had no idea what Dr. Dre meant when he said, “Things just ain’t the same for gangstas,” but I knew I very much wanted to find out. Cussing wasn’t a thing in our house; we weren’t even allowed to watch “The Simpsons.” The third song on this album is titled “Fuck You.” Yazan changed my life that dayn and I never miss a chance to remind him of that.
My only exposure to rap music before this moment was in my dad’s car driving home late one night, when he turned on our local public radio station hoping to hear some jazz and was instead greeted by an unedited version of Mystikal’s “Shake It Fast.” The first line of that song is, “I came here with my d--- in my hand, don’t make me leave with my foot in your a--.”
At the same time, I loved the jazz CDs my dad had gifted me the Christmas prior. I begged my parents to get me the same stereo Yazan had so I could fall asleep to Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck and Billie Holiday every night. I brought those CDs to sleepovers and bugged my friends to turn off their ’N Sync album and play my jazz instead. It’s a miracle they’ve stayed friends with me to this day.
The next big breakthrough happened in my room. It was the first time I noticed Yahoo’s music video tab. It asked me what genre I wanted to hear, so of course I clicked “Rap,” because that’s what Yazan liked. Not long after, I found myself watching the video for Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” which hit me like a ton of bricks. Growing up with parents who were lifelong political activists, the images of marches and protests resonated with me because I had been going to them since I was a kid.
But I may have never expanded my taste beyond political rap if it wasn’t for another video I saw on Yahoo: UGK’s “Wood Wheel.” It had the exact opposite energy of Public Enemy; two dudes leisurely, brilliantly, and effortlessly traded rhymes about being from Texas over a much slower and more laid back beat. The video was filmed on what looked like a bright and sweltering summer day in Texas, and the beat perfectly matched. What sealed the deal was seeing Bun B, Pimp C, and Scarface riding horses on a ranch. Growing up in a relatively small town (at the time) and in a neighborhood that literally had a stable in it, I related to this video so much. The news called this stuff “gangster rap,” but many of the people who made this music would call it “reality rap,” and I ate it up. By the time I was entering college, in the Fall of 2008, I had around 30,000 songs in my iTunes, and, in a sweet twist of fate, I was now the one making mix CDs for my cousin Yazan.
I don’t think I would have had the same ears for rap music if I wasn’t Palestinian. Don’t get me wrong: I came of age in the Crunk Era and was all about it, but even the Ying Yang Twins had a song called “23 Hr. Lock Down” about the failures of America’s carceral system. As I got older, I learned that though they didn’t sound like Public Enemy, the content of UGK’s lyrics was just as political. Because of the politics I was being fed at home, these songs resonated with me in a way that other genres simply could not.
But the explicit language was a tough barrier for my parents to overcome and so we battled over rap music for the next several years. I was even grounded from rap music when my parents heard me listening to 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.,” which is totally fair in retrospect. But the number one rule of being a kid is you have to cling harder to the stuff your parents forbid. Eventually, though, we started to find middle ground when I discovered Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest, who were sampling and referencing artists my parents loved, like Art Blakey, KC and the Sunshine Band, Cannonball Adderly, Jimi Hendrix. There was even a very meta moment when, on Tribe’s “Excursions,” Q-Tip talks about having a conversation with his dad about the similarities between jazz and rap, saying, “I said, ‘Well, daddy, don’t you know things go in cycles.’”
At 30, the age I am now, my dad was going to Gil Scott-Heron concerts and my mom was visiting Gaza to learn about women’s role in the First Intifada. And, as I’ve become whatever an adult is supposed to be, the sweetest thing has been getting to talk Palestine with my rap heroes — Ladybug Mecca, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Method Man, Chuck D, you name it — knowing that these conversations probably wouldn’t be happening without my parents’ influence. My dad has even gotten to hang out with Chuck, who still checks in with me about my “pops,” and my whole family, including my two sisters, has met Lupe.
Sweeter still has been digging through my parents’ records and discovering that the music of their youth, which I’d found and fallen in love with on my own, was staring right back at me: The Doobie Brothers, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, B.B. King, Roy Ayers, Ahmad Jamal, James Gang, The Allman Brothers, and Ella Fitzgerald records, to name a few. Music helped me realize I really am my parents’ child, and to this day music continues to be the surest way to affirm their love for me.
Although our family has a very healthy appreciation for classic Arab singers like Fairuz and Mohammed Abdel Wahab, to me their voices have always felt like they are singing from another time and reaching through to me from the other side of the astral plane. One thing I never had was a real Palestinian or Arab rock star to idolize — someone with bohemian clothes, big hair, and a guitar. Or so I thought. Recently I found out that my father and his siblings started Palestine’s first original rock ‘n’ roll band, Al-Bara’em, in the late 1960s. They played music you could dance to, music you could cry to, and music you could get out in the streets and march to. My aunts became the first women in the country to front a band. And people went crazy for it. They played at Cafe Na’oum in Ramallah every weekend, and there was always a line around the block.
Turns out the rock stars I always wanted were the same people teaching me how to roll grape leaves and make ka’ek (biscuits). Thank goodness their parents, my jido and teta, encouraged them. My jido, who I share a name with but never got to meet, loved his classical music. My teta saw the way her kids’ eyes lit up at the sound of rock ‘n’ roll, and she encouraged that passion, allowing the kids to rehearse in their tiny apartment in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. Soon, those kids had a band, complete with bohemian clothes, big hair, and guitars. Eventually, they were playing for crowds of hundreds in towns and villages across Palestine.
It is bittersweet to think how far Al-Bara’em could have gone had they not lived under occupation, but I know that they would not have made it as far as they did without their parents’ love and encouragement. The same is true for me and my career; I only dreamt big because my parents encouraged me. I know their initial hesitance came from a good place: not wanting to see their kid struggle. But I’m so glad they’ve embraced me, because their support has brought us closer, as much as it’s allowed me to spread my wings. It is my most sincere wish that the love and support of parents raising Palestinian children will bring us generations of culture-shifting artists.
Music can convey a message in a way that no other medium can; music is what brings old friends together and forges new friendships; music drives the passion of lovers; music is what we make as we march and clap and shout for our freedom in the streets; and music is one of the final threads that remains bound to the minds of the elderly.
I hope that in reading this issue you’ll find an artist or a song or a conversation that will stick with you. I hope you will find artists to be proud of. And I hope that makes you feel a little more proud to be yourself. Or maybe you’ll find a story that makes you feel a little more comfortable in your own skin. I know I did.
Sincerely,
Sama’an Ashrawi
Guest Editor
