Evert-Jan Grit

Where There's the Ghetto, There's Hip Hop



Lid, an industrial pauperized city, not far from Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. Not a likely place for vistors and tourists to pass by. Lid faces the same problems as most metropoles and cities all over this world: drugs, pollution, unemployment, gangs, racism and violence. This is the dark side of Israel, the “only democracy in the Middle East,” with its own black minority: the Palestinians who stayed after the Nakba in 1948. Lid is the home base of Israel’s first and best Palestinian Hip Hop band DAM (“Da Arabic Microphone Controllers”). DAM started to perform in 1998 and steadily built a reputation in Israel and abroad. They played in Europe and released a song with the French Algerian group MBS