“There Was Something Inside of Me I Needed to Let Out”: Occupied Masculinities,Emotional Expression and Rap Music in a Palestinian Refugee Camp

Abstract

Although normative constructions of masculinity in Palestine denote emotional suppression as an idealized attribute, extreme subjugation under the grinding realities of a colonial military occupation requires that this ideal is negotiated. This article explores Palestinian rap as a channel through which emotions related to individual and collective oppression are expressed within the (fluid) parameters of a particular emergent masculine performance. Through qualitative research with young Palestinian men living in a refugee camp, I argue that emotional expression within this musical culture both functions to reconfigure binary gendered dynamics, while simultaneously masculinizing emotionality through a dialogic performance of emotion, nationalism, resistance, and paternalism. In some ways, patriarchal gendered binaries are hence challenged in and through the performance of Palestinian rap, while in other ways these are reconfigured so that men’s emotional expression can be subsumed within them. This article, therefore, examines the negotiation of “masculinity as emotional suppression” through rap, in a context in which internal patriarchal powers are routinely threatened by colonial patriarchal forces.

Keywords

emotion music violence war conflict middle east patriarchy

Introduction

Binary gendered norms largely prescribe masculinized scripts of “restrictive emotionality,” determining which emotions can be “appropriately” expressed by whom, and to whom. However, these normative gendered expectations are contextually contingent, and are inevitably disrupted and complicated for Palestinians living under military occupation. Palestinian men thus necessarily contradict and negotiate narratives of masculinized stoicism as they navigate and endure daily harassment, subjugation, and suppression by the occupying Israeli forces. Meanwhile, idealized notions of “masculine excellence” are simultaneously reformulated to maintain gendered hierarchies in a context in which patriarchal powers internal to the Palestinian community are routinely threatened by settler colonial patriarchal forces (in the form of the Israeli state, settlers, and military).

This article explores rap music as a channel through which emotions related to individual and collective subjugation are increasingly expressed within the (fluid) parameters of a particular emergent masculine performance in a Palestinian context. I argue that emotional expression in this particular musical culture both functions to reconfigure binary gendered dynamics, while simultaneously masculinizing emotionality through a dialogic performance of emotion, nationalism, resistance, and paternalism. In some ways, patriarchal gendered binaries are hence challenged in and through the performance of Palestinian rap, while in other ways, these are reconfigured so that men’s emotional expression can be subsumed within them. To analyze these processes, I discuss the experiences of three young Palestinian men living in a refugee camp in occupied West Bank and reflect on lyrics from the prominent Palestinian rap group DAM, as well as two documentaries focused on Palestinian rap.

The article is structured as follows: first, I explore existing literature discussing gender, marginalization, and emotion in Palestine and beyond, followed by an exploration of research examining music, subversion, tragedy, and testimony in a Palestinian context. I then lay out the methodology of this research study, including discussion of my own positionality. The findings section of this article begins with an empirical discussion of emotionality and masculinity in Palestine, and I present my analysis in three sections; (1) emotional catharsis and the release of patriarchal pressure; (2) the renegotiation of symbols of oppression into scripts of “masculine excellence”; and (3) the performance of paternity through the positioning of rappers as role models. This article thus furthers understandings of masculinities as fluid and evolving, enmeshed within intersecting webs of power and adaptable in the maintenance or critique of internal patriarchal dynamics under the weight of colonial oppression.

Occupied Masculinities and Restrictive Emotionality

Stoicism and emotional control are frequently centralized in idealizations of “masculine excellence” across diverse cultures, with variations of the phrase “real men don’t cry,” common parlance in normative gendered discourse. While emotions are fundamental for human development, equipping humanity to communicate, respond, adapt, and therefore, survive, social factors such as age, gender, and culture determine what emotions can be “appropriately” expressed by whom, and to whom, in a process termed “restrictive emotionality” by Jansz (2000, 166). Emotions are therefore gendered, with masculinized ideals predominantly calling for the suppression of relationally “feminised” phenomena such as compassion, sorrow, or fear, while permitting supposedly “masculine” emotions such as anger, lust, or camaraderie (Goldstein 2001). Emotional complexity is hence widely socially denied through contextually specific iterations of a heteropatriarchal gender binary, denigrating a crying man, or policing an enraged woman. This obscures the reality that all human bodies are fundamentally dependant and vulnerable, communicated and soothed through emotional expression.

The inevitable emotional turmoil precipitated by colonial subjugation under military occupation is thus circumscribed by fluctuating gender relations and hierarchies in Palestine, through which, as elsewhere, “proper” displays of masculinity demand a “restrictive emotionality.” Whereas the unequal power dynamics maintained and productive of military might provide ample opportunity for Jewish Israeli men to perform patriarchy—that is, through the enactment of militarized “protection,” military prowess, and domination of an enemy other—the constant presence of a colonizing force has substantially inhibited Palestinian men’s ability to sustain traditionally masculine attributes, and hence distance themselves from feminization. Internal patriarchal powers within Palestine are therefore threatened by settler colonial patriarchal forces (in the form of the Israeli state, settlers. and military), inhibiting normatively masculinized practices such as land ownership, protection, provision, and honor, and heightening colonized men’s sense of gendered inadequacy (Amireh 2003; Johnson and Kuttab 2001; MacKenzie and Foster 2017; Muhanna 2013).

These gendered dynamics feature consistently in Palestinian men’s accounts of living under occupation, leading to what MacKenzie and Foster (2017) identify as a sense of “thwarted masculinity” among the Palestinian collective. Patriarchal performances of fatherhood, protection, land ownership, and economic provision remain the central themes in Palestinian conceptions of “successful” adult masculinity, and failures to perform these practices are fraught with suffering and humiliation (MacKenzie and Foster 2017; Massad 1995; Peteet 1994; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2009). Literature notes a prevalence of disillusionment, hopelessness, and despair among Palestinian men (and women), with these normative attributes of idealized Palestinian masculinity routinely jeopardized under military occupation (Amireh 2003; Johnson and Kuttab 2001; MacKenzie and Foster 2017). The violent loss of the Palestinian homeland has therefore precipitated a loss, not just of territory, but also of “nationalised images of heroic masculinity,” which then morphed into “male-centred narrative[s]’ of humiliation” (Amireh 2003; MacKenzie and Foster 2017, 210). As I argue in this article, music has long been a site in which this suffering and humiliation has been expressed. On one hand, this loosens the binds of gendered notions of restrictive emotionality, while on the other, it reformulates notions of masculinity to maintain or subvert internal gendered hierarchies in the face of external oppression.

Telling Tragedy through Music

Myriad forms of music and art provide a conduit for politics and poetics, offering a space for protest, self-expression, and the telling of testimony under the weight of suppression. Popular music has had a long and varied association with the politics of the personal and beyond, as a space of contestation, reclamation, and reformulation, as the soundtrack of struggle or the object of censorship. Consequently, music has long been mobilized in social movements to either reassert, subvert, or negotiate myriad forms of hegemony, resistance, agency, and identity (Eyerman and Jamison 1998; McDowell 2019; McDowell 2017; Oware, 2018; Street, 2003).

McDowell (2016, 161), for example, explores how “Taqwacore” punks (taqwa meaning God-consciousness in Arabic) use “reflexive racialisation” to create a racial identity as “brown kids” as a counter-narrative to anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric, calling out whiteness and the concomitant vilification of brown-bodied “Others.” Such counter-narratives are also evident through the Palestinian rap group DAM’s famous debut song entitled “Meen Erhabe?’ (Who is the Terrorist?), which repeats (in Arabic–to Israel):

Who’s a terrorist? I’m a terrorist?

How am I a terrorist while I live in my country?

Who’s a terrorist? You’re a terrorist!

You’ve taken everything I own while I’m living in my homeland.

Through such lyrics, DAM subverts regimes of knowledge which construct Palestinians as “socially primitive violent terrorists” who “only understand force,” and other such discourses mobilized to justify Israel’s suppression of the Palestinian people (Peteet 1994, 37). DAM’s words function as a site of contestation and protest, countering the post-9/11 “imaginative geographies” which bolster international support for the military occupation (Gregory 2004).

Such contestations relating to identity, class, racism, and oppression have a long history within the genre of rap (Oware 2018; Rose 1994). This is noted within this study by Jamal, a Palestinian refugee and rapper, who referenced Tupac and “old-school rap”—“music about life in the ghetto”—as an inspiration for him and Palestinian rappers more broadly. Rose (1994, 4) discusses rap as “a cultural vehicle for open social reflection” on myriad issues, while Oware (2018, 3) echoing her, emphasizes the “political and sometimes contradictory messages” in rap music as a critique, reassertion, or contestation of particular forms of power from given classed, racialized, and gendered social locations. In relation to gender, rap music can variably function to reinforce, critique, subvert, or renegotiate oppressive binaries and hierarchies (Rose 1994). This could take the form of heterosexist or misogynistic lyrics, or, conversely, offer an explicit critique of misogyny, homophobia, or sexism. With lyrics that are largely protest driven, prominent Palestinian rap group DAM has produced a number of songs critiquing patriarchy and gender-based violence, including “If I could go Back in Time” in collaboration with UN Women, “Jasadik-Hom” (Your Body of Theirs), and “Who You Are” (discussed below). Yet, gender can be performed or renegotiated through music in more subtle ways—while explicitly critiquing racial or class-based hierarchies.

Massad (2003, 21) explores Palestinian “liberating songs” dating back to the ‘Nakba' of 1948 to indicate the centrality of songs in “the Palestinian struggle,” stating that music has been a central component of “how Arab popular culture has dealt, and continues to deal, with the Palestine tragedy.” He traces the changes in musical styles and lyrics as corresponding to changes in Palestinian oppression and resistance, yet he does not address the contemporary emergence of Palestinian rap which has since arisen out of this use of music to express tragedy (Procter 2013), nor does he discuss the tensions and negotiations of idealized masculinity in the very public articulation of suffering.

McDonald (2010, 211) discusses wedding music and debke (Palestinian dance), suggesting that the reformulation of masculinized embodied meanings is articulated through the performance of “protest songs, dances and mimetic acts of martyrdom […] foretell[ing] Palestinian victory through victimisation.” McDonald (2010) hence analyzes performances of nationalism and resistance, and the demonstration of bodily and national wounds as indications of esteemed masculinity, steadfast in the face of occupation. He builds on Peteet’s (1994, 33) important work illustrating the masculinized transformation and appropriation of violence in the context of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising), in which she observed the reformulation of beatings administered by the occupying power as “experiences of transformation and empowerment, not of humiliation and pacification,” masculinized as a rite of passage into the idealized Palestinian masculinity. Although referring to lyrics which highlight “suffering and victimisation” to confer a reconfigured masculinized “victory,” McDonald (2010, 211) does not explicitly discuss the emotionality inherent in these gendered performances.

Similarly focused predominantly on national resistance, Greenberg (2009, 231) discusses hip hop as a “reclamation of masculinity” in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem. This focus on “reclamation” rather than a “renegotiation” suggests an analysis of masculinity as a “fixed goal” to be actualized. Meanwhile, emotions are not explicitly mentioned or analyzed in this study, despite noting B-Boy’s (the founder of G-Town) assertion that he “had formed G-Town during the second intifada in response to feelings of hopelessness” and “being lost.” In view of emotional expression, I argue here that Palestinian rap is an emergent space in which elements of idealized masculinity are being reformulated and even subverted (rather than “reclaimed”) in a context of violence.

With the rise of popularity of rap within Palestine, another cultural space has emerged in which words can be used, says prominent Palestinian rap artist Tamer Nafar, “as weapons” in an assertion of national presence, marginalization, and resistance (Greenberg 2009; McDonald 2013). In line with Palestine’s trajectory of “liberating songs” produced in a context of settler colonial subjugation (Massad 2003), performances of sumud, resistance, and defiance are communicated through the channel of rap. This is increasingly performed and consumed by young adult Palestinian men (shabaab), as well as, significantly, some young women, such as Maysa Daw from DAM, indicating a subversion and critique of patriarchal gender norms that relegate women to the private sphere (critiqued by DAM in the song “Who You Are”). Focusing on emotionality, this article analyzes Palestinian rap music as a space for the renegotiation of particular gendered performances, discussing rap as a socially legitimized space for Palestinian men’s (and women’s) expression of emotion within fluid masculine parameters under the suffocating realities of occupation.

Methodology

The findings of this article emerged out of a wider research project exploring the gendered and sexual politics of military occupation in Israel and Palestine, with a specific focus on masculinities. I conducted this research from 2012 to 2016, and the findings have been enriched by ethnographic observations while I lived and worked in the occupied Old City of Hebron, Palestine, for two years.

Out of 32 participants recruited through snowball sampling, including Israeli military conscripts and reservists, Palestinians subjugated by that same military, and men and women across these hierarchies of power, seven Palestinian men participated in the research project out of which this article originates. Of these seven Palestinian men, four originated from a refugee camp, three of whom independently and collaboratively produced rap music. It is these men, named with pseudonyms as Ibrahim, Khalil, and Hassan, whose experiences and perspectives are discussed in depth in this article. Statements from other male Palestinian participants from the wider study, namely Ibrahim and Dawud, are drawn upon to contextualize the discussion of masculinities and emotionality under occupation.

The three men whose experiences are explored here are classified as “shabaab” in a Palestinian context, unmarried, young men (each was below the age of 25 years at the time of interviewing). Each was able to communicate and express themselves well in English, and each had lived in an overcrowded and under-resourced refugee camp in the occupied West Bank for their entire lives. Although afforded gendered power as men in a patriarchal context, these participants were oppressed on the basis of their ethnicity and class in this context, given their position as Palestinians living under an Israeli military occupation, and their status as refugees in the West Bank. I maintained a small sample to allow for in-depth analysis of the nuance of lived experience, and in recognition of the sensitive nature of this research exploring violence and gender. The findings are also enriched through analysis of two documentaries on Palestinian rap and DAM’s rap lyrics used as “texts” in this article, as well as years of immersion in a Palestinian context.

The exploration of rap, masculinities, and emotional expression under occupation was not an avenue of exploration I intentionally pursued, but a finding which arose in organic discussion of the gendered experience of military occupation for young Palestinian men living in a refugee camp. Upon initially interviewing Jamal, who referenced writing rap as “the way for me to empty what is inside me,” I pursued this as a line of inquiry to further interrogate emotionality, masculinity and subjection to colonial violence. Jamal connected me with Hassan and Khalil who then participated in the broader study and offered deeper insight into the focus of this article, as shabaab who also wrote rap and participated in this musical culture. I interviewed Jamal and Hassan twice for approximately 1.5 h, and Khalil once, for approximately 2 h, given his availability.

I conducted semi-structured interviews in English—my native language and their second language—which undoubtedly placed limitations on their ability to emotionally express as they would in Arabic. That said, I queried if they would rather be interviewed in English, with only myself present, or with a translator in Arabic, and they opted for the former. Nonetheless, a process of translation was always taking place, internally as they translated their experiences, and no doubt, some meaning was lost in translation. Yet, knowledge is always produced from a social location; the cross-language dimension of the research hence does not invalidate the findings, and nor does the “objective” and neutral transfer of information occur in same-language research (Edwards 1998).

The semi-structured nature of interviews, simultaneously flexible and pre-planned in their nature, allowed me to articulate clear lines of inquiry, yet give space to participants to discuss themes and issues which I had not foreseen. Following consent, I recorded the interviews, and subsequently transcribed and coded them. Having realized the significance of rap for these young men, I utilize Salloum’s (2008) “Slingshot Hip Hop” and Halachmi’s (2003) “Channels of Rage” which focus on rap music, occupation, and conflict in Israel and Palestine as “texts” to further inform this exploration, as well as the lyrics of the most well-known Palestinian rap group DAM.

My own positionality inevitably shaped the research process, in terms of the way in which participants responded and expressed themselves to me, as well as the way in which I interpreted their discussions. My gendered identity as a cis woman and feminist studying gender, and my white ethnicity and British nationality in a setting stratified by race and ethnicity are of particular relevance here. In being interviewed by a woman, the men in this research may have felt more able to explore emotionality than had I been a man, for whom they may have felt more pressured to perform stoicism; these conversations simply may not have been had in a homosocial interaction.

With a British passport and a white body, I was able to move between the military checkpoints that enclose the participants discussed in this article and enter and leave their refugee camp at will. In a context sharply divided by race and ethnicity, my privilege and power to move within their land were painfully apparent as I traversed the legal and physical barriers constructed by the Israeli state to exclude those with whom I was meeting. The reality of this is deeply poignant; to contextualize, Ibrahim had recently been denied entry to visit Israel on account of the fact that his brother had previously been shot dead by an Israeli soldier (he had wished to visit the beach with his friends). This rendered him a “security risk” likely to be harboring resentment against the state of Israel, and hence he was prohibited from visiting the sea to which he lived so close. Therefore, I met Ibrahim, Khalil, and Jamal in the refugee camp in which they lived, in public spaces chosen by them.

Having immersed myself in Israel and Palestine intermittently over six years, my interpretation of the context inevitably shaped my analysis within this research. From witnessing Palestinian children being teargassed daily by Israeli forces on route to school via checkpoints in Hebron, to exploring militarism in depth within an Israeli context, I have a broad perspective on the deeply unjust and divisive, indeed illegal military occupation that plagues the lives of those in this study. I also have perspective and insight on the many processes which undergird militarism as an omnipotent phenomenon within an Israeli context, which I concieve as a settler colonial and 'ethnocratic' polity (Yiftachel 2006). As a feminist, I am concerned with undoing gender binaries in the endeavor toward gender justice. In line with the work of intersectional theorists, I consider gender to be mutually constituted through other interlocking systems of oppression, such as race, class, coloniality, and ethnicity. These politics and perspectives propelled me to critically study masculinities in this context.

Findings and Analysis

I begin my findings and analysis section with an empirical discussion of emotionality, gender, and occupation in Palestine, and follow this with three subsections exploring: (1) catharsis and a release of patriarchal pressure, (2) the reformulation of symbols of oppression, and (3) simultaneous performances of paternity.

High emotion ran through Palestinian participants’ discussions of life under occupation throughout this research. From Dawud, a Palestinian man who participated in the broader research project, who stated “you know what I feel like? I feel like a loser,” to Ibrahim and Khalil, Palestinian shabaab living in a refugee camp, who respectively explained to me “I have a lot of anger in my life,” and “everyone wants to explode himself up.” After recounting his subjection to beatings and strip searches by Israeli forces, the shootings he has witnessed, and constant oppression under military occupation, Ibrahim discussed emotion as a result of the violence he and those around him had faced, yet emphasized his (sometimes failed) attempts to contain these emotions:

“I have a lot of anger in my life, maybe more than you can imagine…I will be in control of myself to a point, but at a point I can’t handle it and I will be angry in this moment. […] Maybe after some time it will fade. It is normal. Maybe, for me, everyone who knows me told me that I keep my emotions and I never, any of us, talking about it. So, if anything happens with me, I will just put it inside and don’t talk about it in front of anybody.”

While describing his anger as “more than you can imagine,” Ibrahim states that he “never […] talk[s] about it in front of anybody.” He reasserts this collective (masculinized) pressure stating that while “everyone who knows [him]” characterizes him as “keep[ing his] emotions” to himself, it is not only him that does this, as “never, any of us, talk[…] about it” [emphasis added]. This, he states, “is normal.” The abnormal becomes normal until “at a point I can’t handle it.” This immense pressure, explained Khalil, “it’s like, you know, a balloon, when you start to give a balloon like that much air, then it comes like it is going to explode.” And yet, as explored by Allen (2008), life goes on in Palestine: ta’wwudna—we’ve gotten used to it—and the emotional control necessary to practice sumud (steadfastness through remaining on the land) without “explod[ing]” becomes bound with notions of nationalism, resistance, and survival under oppression, reinforcing esteemed masculinity as necessarily stoic in the face of hardship.

Emotions inevitably precipitated by extreme subjugation under an external patriarchal power are hence circumscribed by internal gendered binariesthat largely designate women as fundamentally emotionally expressive, and unable to “handle the things” (Khalil), while men, by contrast, are positioned as innately rational, stoic and in control. Khalil and Hassan stated:

“[G]irls: they are controlled by emotions; they are controlled by their feeling more than their mind…. but, on the other hand, the man is controlled by his mind much more than by his feeling. So, women are called the ‘sister of a man’ [if] you are acting like a man, like you can handle the things” (Khalil)

“We grew up in a community that shows that you are man, don’t cry, you are man, don’t let your sister beat you, because you are a man.” (Hassan)

Normative binary gendered expectations hence dictate that men do not cry, display weakness, emotions, or feelings, whereas women are deemed unable to “handle the things” unless masculinized as the “sister of a man.” Internal gendered hierarchies are thus maintained through the performance of “maleness” as control, rationality, and stoicism in relation to feminized “others,” who are seen to be led by their “feeling more than their mind.” Indeed, explained Hassan, “to be a man” in the camp, one has to be “kind of controlling.” And yet, these internal patriarchal dynamics are threatened by decades of colonial suppression—which undeniably results in emotional suffering, humiliation, and hopelessness for all Palestinians, regardless of their gender.

Rapping as Catharsis: A Release of Patriarchal Pressure?

A key rationale for performing rap for those in this study, and those featured in Slingshot HipHop and Channels of Rage, was emotional catharsis. The importance of rapping (in Arabic) for Jamal for both controlling and expressing his emotions is clear in the statement:

“If I didn’t sing, and if I didn’t write to strong beats I will ‘boom’ you know, there is a lot of pressure inside of me…I take my anger and put it in my song, it is the way for me to empty what is inside me.”

This practice of emotional expression and release is also articulated by Hassan in the following anecdote in which he reflects on the use of music to help him “relax” and be “happy,” as well as to grieve the killing of his friend:

“In 2008, when the intifada wasn’t that much…I was a rapper, and doing my thing with my friends, and we met a guy from Ireland who wanted to make a video clip for us…but then my friend was killed [by the Israeli military]—my childhood friend. So, we can’t make the date [for the video], and [the Irish man] came to us and says ‘why did you cancel this? You have to do this’. He said ‘you have to do this for your friend. You have to show all the world about your friend’. So, losing my friend, [I was] searching for things that make me happy. So, I tried to mix between two things, sadness, and the things which make me happy. Music make you relax, music, even when life is not quiet, music make you express yourself.”

Both Jamal and Hassan clearly outline music as a cathartic mechanism allowing them to “empty” or “express” themselves. They explicitly reference emotions precipitated by military oppression and a related bereavement, including pressure, sadness, and anger, and clearly articulate their rap music as a tool to enable them to navigate and express these. Rather than asserting masculinized notions of “handl[ing] the things” (Khalil) or “never […] talking about it” (Ibrahim), they speak openly of emotion in relation to their music in the face of extreme subjugation and violence.

Male Palestinian rappers in Salloum’s (2008) “Slingshot Hip Hop” documentary echo Jamal and Hassan’s assertions that they use rap as a channel to both express and control their emotions stating:

“I wasn’t rapping at the time of the intifada, it was the time I suffered most, it was a time that made me feel I wasn’t human, I was totally demoralised. You see things that are unimaginable here, they were very hard times for me. I felt like the world was closing in on me, I would go upstairs and start breaking things…anything. There was something inside of me I needed to let out” (Palestinian rapper from Gaza in Salloum, 2008).

However, one man from Gaza explains in the documentary that, although he tried, he was unable to express his feelings through rap:

“I wish for one thing, to live in peace to feel hope and not to live in fear. From all the devastation it was hard to feel anything anymore, so I started rapping to release what’s inside of me. But no matter how I try, I’m still not able to express my feelings, especially the devastation.”

Although music is a helpful tool for the expression of emotion for this man, it clearly has limitations; the complexity and full scale of his “devastation” could not be conveyed through musical expression. That said, his rationale for rapping was “to release what is inside of me” suggesting rap as a socially acceptable space for expression of emotions, for both men, and, increasingly women, most visible of whom is DAM’s feminist rapper Maysa Daw, as well as Shadia Mansour, and the female Palestinian rap groups Arapeye, DMAR, and Ettijah.

Therefore, on one hand, Palestinian rap is a space in which gendered hierarchies and binaries are being undone and even openly critiqued. For example, in “Who You Are,” DAM’s lyrics asserts, “either it’s justice for both genders, or we will start honor killing men.” Meanwhile, the emergence of female Palestinian rappers suggests a renegotiation of gendered notions of the public and private within this musical culture, and the social legitimation of emotional expression for men producing rap suggests a reformulation of idealized masculinity as emotionally controlled and stoic. In this way, Palestinian rap provides space for the enactment of agency in the face of subjugation, as both men and women can “own” and “appropriate” their anger (at internal or external patriarchal oppression), sadness, pressure, suffering, and demoralization, and create music to “give us oxygen” (rapper in Salloum 2008). In this way, rap is functioning as a cathartic mechanism releasing gendered pressure on men expected to be stoic in the face of colonial oppression, and on women subjected to both modes of patriarchy. From this perspective, Palestinian rap is a tool which is being increasingly used to unpick heteropatriarchal notions of control, of both the self and the feminized other.

However, Palestinian rap, as elsewhere (Oware 2018), is not one coherent space, and contradictory messages are presented by diverse actors. Thus, patriarchal and heterosexist hierarchies are elsewhere asserted through Palestinian rap, as a means through which “masculinity as control” can be “reclaimed” (rather than reformulated) in the face of racialized oppression by an occupying force. Evoking misogyny and sexualized denigration of a feminized “other” alongside depression as a marginalized man, a Palestinian rapper stopped and searched by Israeli police in Salloum’s (2008) documentary stated:

“[T]hose little bitches can forget about it…they can suck my dick…and my ass. Sometimes I suddenly feel depressed. I feel like I can’t do anything with my life…I’m sick of it…so sick of it. I can’t think about it anymore, it really brings me down. But they can’t make decisions for me. I will make my own…through my music.”

In this circumstance, he reinforces a misogynistic hypermasculinity, designating the feminized other a “little bitch” worthy only of sexual acts, while following this with an expression of despair and defiance. He, therefore, reasserts both sexualized control and the ability to enact agency “through my music” as masculinized attributes, alongside an outcry of despair as a colonised man. In this case, sexually aggressive masculinity, emotionality, class, race, and resistance are bound together through rap, suggesting a “reclamation” of masculinity as control, and a reassertion of the gender binary in the face of racialized subjugation. Rapping, in this instance, is nonetheless a space in which he can “make [his] own” decisions, in spite of military oppression, depression, and despair.

Brandishing “Scars”: Masculinizing Emotion through Rap

In discussion of the gendered dynamics of military occupation during the first Palestinian intifada, Peteet (1994, 33) observes that “a prominent mode of embedding the power of the dominant group is to beat [symbolically or actually], daily and publicly, Palestinian male bodies…encoding and conveying a message about the consequences of oppositional expressions and practices.” Nearly three decades on, this statement remains tragically pertinent. In a context in which idealized masculinity is centered around notions of control, bravery, honor, familial protection, propriety, and provision, Peteet (1994) argued that such beatings were appropriated by those subjected to it during the first intifada, to reverse the act into one of manhood and honor. Such spectacles of violence, Peteet argued (1994), functioned as a “rite of passage,” which became crucial to the construction of a gendered (male) Palestinian adult self, who possessed critical political consciousness and suffered for the national struggle. In this way, suppression by a colonial entity was reformulated in the maintenance of existing gendered scripts which establish the “masculine” as power.

Since the first Palestinian intifada, however, a growing hopelessness pervades Palestinian youth as a result of the debilitating tenacity of the decades-long Israeli occupation. This cultural discourse appears to have shifted somewhat, at least among the participants in this study, none of whom appeared to wear the physical or structural violence inflicted upon them as an “honour badge” of their manhood. Khalil and Jamal explained:

“With an Israeli we are not able to do anything. These Israelis, they have the power, they have the authority, they have the weapons. And they are fighting us with these weapons, while we have nothing” (Khalil).

“I saw them like take the youth from the camp, and beat him and do something to him that is bad, I feel like a bad thing inside me…and I can’t do anything when I saw him. I don’t have anything to do, I can’t, I don’t have a gun like him, I don’t have anything. Every night they are coming. And it is like a normal thing. It feels like a normal thing. Now when the soldiers come in the camp I just sit in the home, and wish they would be gone…I go on Facebook…I do anything…I try not to think about them, because what can I do? In the past sometimes the guys in the camp they was like throwing stones at them and something like that, but now it is like nobody do that, because the stones will never do anything. They have a gun, and they have jeeps and a lot of things, what can I do? The stone…what can it do? There is no benefit.” (Jamal).

In contrast to Peteet’s (1994, 31) observations of the shifting cultural and gendered discourses of the first intifada, these men appeared to experience their embodied and collective occupation not as “experiences of transformation and empowerment,” but as “humiliation and pacification.” Indeed, Ibrahim explained to me, “everything they do, it is to make us, humiliate us and make our dignity less and less.” Indicating a despairing sense of physical powerlessness and lack of control, Jamal asks “what can I do?” three times in the above quote, illustrating a growing hopelessness, and depicting a “domesticated” masculinity (David, an Israeli academic interviewed for the broader research study) living in a terrorized silence, in which the subjection to colonial violence becomes “normal.”

However, turn to the articulations of young Palestinian men in relation to the contemporary emergence of rap, and a similar process to that formerly identified by Peteet (1994) can be observed. Rather than the brandishing of physical scars to communicate participation in the national struggle, the expression of emotion surrounding suffering and oppression is often performed through Palestinian rap alongside particular, more traditionally masculinized motifs, such as nationalism, resistance, protection, moral superiority (to Israelis), and the reclamation of voice. Hence, in the place of bodily suffering, emotions surrounding victimization and suffering are lyrically “brandished,” while discursively linked to patriarchal attributes of protection, honor, courage, and defiance.

Teenage refugees in Salloum’s (2008) documentary illustrate this linkage between suffering, strength, and victory in the face of marginalization through their assertion that they will “bring [their friend who was killed at a demonstration] back to life with a song,” resisting the weight of the occupation by rapping (in Arabic with English subtitles): “we refuse to live on our knees, we’d rather die on our feet/I cried a lot of tears, but tears can’t extinguish hope.” In these lyrics, tears and masculinized defiance are bound together in such a way that one does not negate the other. The teenage boys exhibit their emotions related to suffering and oppression explicitly in reference to their tears and bereavement yet assert steadfastness and commitment to resisting the weight of occupation in the lyric “we’d rather die on our feet.” In this way, emotional scars are laid bare, while more traditional tropes of masculinity, namely courage, nationalism, and resistance, are asserted.

Similarly, DAM raps in Salloum’s (2008) documentary (in Arabic): “They try to crush us, we stay on our feet […] Your wings are broken? Start walking, my brothers.” In short, in spite of oppression, in spite of suffering, “brothers” resist and persist. Such symbolism is also palpable in numerous Palestinian rap videos, which include emblems of marginalization, suffering, and oppression (such as refugee camps, the wall, Israeli military might, or demolished homes), alongside symbols of Palestinian resistance, such as the Palestinian flag, the key (indicating the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees), and the keffiyah (see also Greenberg 2009). In so doing, the masculinized attribute of being “able to handle” oppression is expressed (Khalil and Ibrahim), through the centralization of pain alongside steadfastness, sumud, as resistance. If rap is “for a revolution” (Hassan), “to say what I want, to send our message, to tell people we are here in the camp…our music is talking” (Jamal), then expressing emotion becomes part and parcel of resistance. In this way, the lyrical expression of suffering is demonstrable of a masculinized ability to withstand hardship, and an assertion of national presence; rap is both for “talking,” and “for a revolution,” and emotional scars are legitimately laid bare within masculinized parameters.

“Protective Uncles”: Rappers as Role Models

In a context in which “every one of us he feels like he should be the leader” (Khalil), and yet patriarchal attributes of familial protection and leadership are routinely threatened by the colonial occupying force (MacKenzie and Foster 2017), emotional expression through rap is also masculinized through its connection with paternity, leadership, and protection of youth, as well as nationalism and resistance as explored above.

Jamal explained that rap was not initially accepted by his community, given the perceived connection of rap to “bad things” which represented a distancing from Palestinian culture (see also Greenberg 2009):

“The people in the camp at the beginning they didn’t understand us, and they didn’t accept us, and my family they didn’t understand me. […] It is not our culture, they didn’t understand us, it is like, you know, Eminem and 50 Cent they sing about girls and cars, and a lot of things, bad things, and that is not our culture…But when we make our first concert in the camp, when the people listen to our lyrics and my family came to the concert to see their son, they were really happy, and they accept us, and told us, go on, you do a good thing, continue.”

Since the emergence of DAM during the second intifada, Palestinian rap is now a widespread musical culture (Procter 2013; Salloum 2008), bound even to normative patriarchal performances of protection and sacrifice. One rapper in Halachmi’s (2003) documentary “Channels of Rage” asserts that he “protects Arabs through the mic,” while themes of martyrdom and sacrifice are frequently noted in rap songs, for example, in the lyric: “I kiss the ground you [Palestinians] walk on/ And say to you, I sacrifice myself for you” in this same documentary. Furthermore, like dabke dance, videography and other forms of art, rap has been included in the various projects and programs that exist in refugee camps and elsewhere in Palestine for marginalized youth and children, to equip them to creatively navigate, explore and express the many challenges and traumas of military occupation (Greenberg 2009; Salloum 2008).

Protection and guidance of kin and community can therefore be enacted through rap, reclaimed through the activity of some rappers working with children (demonstrated in Salloum’s [2008] “Slingshot Hip Hop,” performed by participants in this research, and noted by Greenberg 2009), allowing young men to fill the role of “protective uncles” (Greenberg 2009, 241). This is a role which may otherwise have been inaccessible to them given their age and, for those in this research, their refugee status. Often tying this to the rejection of activities such as drug use and violence (see Greenberg 2009), rappers can thus become local leaders and role models. One children’s worker in Salloum’s documentary (2008) explains: “Children used to look up to the drug dealers, because they had money and cars, now the children look up to DAM [rap group], they are the role models.”

Hassan referred to his work with children in his refugee camp through rap music as “helping them find new ways to express themselves.” Emotional catharsis through rap is therefore masculinized through its connection to national resistance as outlined above, as well as the role of many rappers (in particular places such as refugee camps) as youth leaders and “protective uncles” (Greenberg 2009, 241), “train[ing] kids how to express their feelings through this music” (Hassan). In this way, paternalism and protection are enacted alongside emotionality, forging a space in which the expression of emotion does not signify a feminized and demeaned weakness, but a necessary aspect of survival under the suffocating weight of colonial occupation.

Conclusion

Although normative constructions of masculinity in Palestine denote emotional suppression as an idealized attribute, extreme marginalization under the grinding realities of a colonial military occupation requires that this ideal is negotiated. Meanwhile, Palestinian music has a long tradition of telling tragedy—the stories and sufferings of loss and occupation. I have argued that rap music offers this same space for emotive communication for those performing it. This serves to reconfigure masculinized expectations of stoicism, while masculinizing emotional expression through its concomitance with patriarchal tropes of resistance, nationalism, and protection within rap spaces, lyrics, and symbolism.

Rap music as a “scream” hence functions as a cathartic mechanism (Hassan), through which emotions surrounding oppression and subjection to settler colonial violence can be expressed and performed. To some extent, I argue that this lessens patriarchal expectations of stoicism for young Palestinian men, circumscribed as they are by the external patriarchal forces of military occupation. Moreover, with some women participating in this musical culture, such as Maysa Daw and Shadia Mansour among others, gendered hierarchies and binaries are being further challenged in some spaces, explicitly through lyrics, such as DAM’s noted above or implicitly simply through the presence of women performing in public spaces.

Meanwhile, like the brandishing of scars on the body as a symbol of participation in national resistance, the communication of suffering through rap is seemingly masculinized through its performance alongside normative patriarchal enactments of steadfastness, nationalism, and courage. Furthermore, with rap a tool to help children “find new ways to express themselves” (Hassan), the expression of emotion is increasingly normalized within masculinized parameters through subscription to the esteemed attribute of paternalism and sacrifice.

Through dialogic performances of emotion, protection, and resistance, rap music is an emergent space in which masculinized expectations of stoicism are being negotiated in the face of colonial occupation. In some ways and spaces, patriarchal gendered binaries are hence challenged in and through the performance of rap, while in other ways these are reconfigured and foregrounded so that men’s emotional expression can become subsumed within them. However, in both circumstances, emotionality is arguably central to the performance and rationale for Palestinian rap, in spite of gendered pressure for men to “handle the things.” In a context in which internal patriarchal powers are routinely threatened by colonial patriarchal forces, this gendered ideal of restrictive emotionality is negotiated, simultaneously maintaining gendered hierarchies in some instances, while subverting or reconfiguring gendered binaries in others. Rap music presents once such space in which these dynamics are apparent.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Chloe Skinner is a post-doctoral researcher based at the Institute of Development Studies. Her doctoral research, of which this article is one published output, was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and was completed at the University of Sheffield. She has since worked as a human rights activist in Palestine and is currently revising her doctoral thesis into a research monograph.

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