Arab rappers take revolts to next level

Khat Thaleth ... ‘Third Track’

BEIRUT, Feb 28, (AFP): Sitting on the fringes of upheaval in the Middle East, Lebanon’s capital Beirut has become the scene of experimental music-making by Khat Thaleth, a group of rappers out to take the revolts that started during the Arab Spring to the next level.

The collective has members from around the region — ranging from Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab uprising, to the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon — and vocalises the realities of a new generation carrying the baggage of the past.

Khat Thaleth literally means “Third Track”, a metaphor for an alternative take on the polarised societies and politics of the region, and a reference to the Hijaz Muslim pilgrimage railway which once connected the Arab world.

“We’re not doing rap. This is not the same as American or French music; it has to do with our culture, our history,” said Al Sayyed Darwish, a member of the Syrian trio LaTlateh.

The 24-year-old from Homs, known as the capital of the Syrian revolution, said the protests which have swept the Middle Eastern region since 2010 lit the fuse for the collaboration which he describes as “a first of its kind”.

“People and the street are so far ahead of us... We need to catch up with them,” Darwish told AFP.

As Syrian hip-hop developed alongside the nearly two-year-old revolt against the regime, “people started to listen... and it became more direct,” he said.

On the morning of a concert in early February to plug the rappers’ album release, Darwish said he was well aware that much of the audience would be expecting the Syrian rappers to speak of the struggle in their country.

“It’s a big responsibility that you have 250 people (at) a concert,” he said.

“And they are expecting you to give them something to relieve them... So it’s a big responsibility, a big pleasure and a big honour for me to be a representative for my people and my revolution.”

Though the Khat Thaleth artists come from similar backgrounds, they do not shrink from belting out sharply divergent views — even on the same track.

On “Souret Soureya” (Verse of Syria), El Rass, who hails from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, goes head-to-head with Paris-based Lebanese artist Hamourabi on the Syrian revolt.

“El Rass is talking about the revolution and how the rebels are moving, and Hamourabi is saying they are terrorists and it’s a conspiracy” yet “they are on the same track, and it’s great to have this diversity,” said Darwish.

“We would love to show people that you don’t have to kill each other for having different points of view.”

And those points of view cover some big subjects.

In the song “E-stichrak” (Orientalism) — borrowing the title of the Edward Said book that said Western caricatures of Islamic culture were used to justify colonialism — El Rass and El Faraai, a Palestinian-Jordanian, bemoan a modern form of imperialism.

“They brought the dumbest American to come teach me my human rights... while a

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