Despite censorship and boycotts, the veteran rap group have never shied away from the political. But the situation in Gaza has made them question whether there’s really any power in art
It’s just after 10.30pm on a Friday night when, fresh from their packed-out sundowner set, Tamer Nafar, Mahmoud Jreri and Maysa Daw – AKA the Palestinian hip-hop collective DAM – squeeze into a cramped backstage cabin at Womad, the global music festival in Wiltshire. Theirs is, quite clearly, a confused and contradictory mood: adrenaline-filled, but downbeat and sombre.
“All of this,” Nafar says, gesturing around, “is confusing emotionally. We may as well confront it.” Face-painted revellers trickle past outside the window – funk music seeping through the prefab walls – as we prepare to discuss the situation in Palestine. Since the 7 October attack by Hamas, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis, over 40,000 Palestinians – the vast majority of them civilians – have been killed in Israel’s military offensive across the 25-mile-long Gaza strip, according to health authorities under the Hamas-run Gaza government. The UN has warned that half of the region’s population – 1 million – face starvation and death this summer.
