Black autumn
Personal reflections regarding the recent genocidal acts against Palestinians, the Hungarian scene and connecting the dots through the beautiful music of the occupied territories
This is supposed to be my big autumnal newsletter about recent music discoveries, but I felt the need to express my thoughts about the recent horrific events. My readers, not to worry though, this post will also contain a lot of music links and other resources of cultural artefacts.
After years of uncertainity because of the Covid outbreak, the dissappointment of the Hungarian elections and the Russian invasion of Ukraine happening right next to us, I think a lot of people here turned off the news channels to concentrate on their own life a little bit. I don’t blame anyone, because I did the exact same thing: 2023 so far was about to rethink and reorganize my ways of living, working and relationships, with good success I have to say. One of the greatest teachings of these past years is that community is the most important thing to cherish in this bleak & short existence. I feel lucky to say that the Budapest underground music scene is a loose web of friendly circles, with many many helpful and warm-hearted people. This is why I think it’s crucial to point out that there are Palestinian people in this scene too, who are very actively working on curating exciting and diverse events here for years. Up until now, I’ve never really tought of the sheer fact that they’d never be able to do this in their own country. They kindly invited me to play on multiple events they organised, including one night which was dedicated to bring us together with musicians from the Middle East. Nonetheless, I’ve never really asked them how they ended up here, or about their heritage in general. Besides some bits from other convos and instagram content, I was very uneducated about the ongoing oppression the Palestinians are going through.
Because of my inward-looking manners this year, I was also very late with acknowledging the news about the murderous attack of Hamas and the unimaginable, [still ongoing] following acts of Israel. I’ve never really seen a topic that was as dividing even in my circles as these attacks. I’ve also never thought that IG stories and reels become a more reliable source of information on the matter than actual newspapers. I was genuinely surprised by the one-sidedness of the Hungarian media reports (and that one side was oc Israeli loss).
Palestinians enjoy a ride at an amusement park outside Gaza City, March 26, 2006. Anja Niedringhaus—AP
I started to notice that the international music community, DJs, musicians, independent radios I follow are posting statements, broadcasting educational materials, organizing crowdfunding events, offering up their fees to one of the Palestinian aid organizations, going to protests. Not so surprisingly, I’ve seen no Budapest-based DJs do the same things. I think this partially comes from the same lack of information about the occupation, but I also assume that people here don’t really want to publicly engage with international political affairs. I think that depriving djing and music making from being a political act is a false attitude on its own. For me it just started to feel very wrong to keep posting about my daily life without acknowledging a genocide happening in real time, especially that I happen to know people of the nation that is getting wiped out.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for at least two weeks now and I had doubts about already being too late with it, but I guess I can never be late with showing solidarity and sharing educational content. I attempt to gather together some of the links and videos that had a deep affect on me personally, as well as some stuff I think is obligatory to check out.
My first encounters with Palestinian culture came of course through music. As an avid follower of the Discrepant label I discovered Muqata’a’s Inkanakuntu album sometime in 2018.
As a noisy, bleak and experimental take on instrumental hip hop, loaded with samples coming from traditional Arabic music, I immediately fell in love with it, repeating from beginning to end a thousand times. Little I knew that this guy was one of the most important voices of the Palestinian conscious hip hop scene at the end of 2000s. Alongside Stormtrap (now working under the name Asifeh) he was part of the collective Ramallah Underground, whose lyrics reflected on the daily struggles of Palestinian people under occupation. Even though never releasing an official album, they met international success, collaborating with a lot of artists from around the globe (e.g. Kronos Quartet) and giving concerts at numerous countries.
Both of them actually played in Budapest in recent years, Muqata’a was performing a mindblowing live set at UH Fest in 2019 and Asifeh appeared on this SCENE س event where I also had a DJ set earlier this year.
Another album that had a great impact on me is Shabjdeed’s debut LP SINDIBAD EL WARD, coming out on his circle's own BLTNM label and also got a Vinyl reissue on the small but amazing Hundebiss Records in Italy.
I can’t even count how many times I listened this through, at this point I think I could even lip sync the songs, even though my understanding of the lyrics are sadly limited to abilites of Google Translate, besides the English intro of Arab Style:
We don't do this gang shit
We're family, Arab style
Occupation is my trade mark
War zone is where I die
Originated from the Arabian front
Where you won't come or try
We've been there all this time, nah
Don't trust any blonde white guy
Swear a magic that will keep you wondering
My phone won't stop once vibrating
Put my soul on this everything
Put my soul on my everything
The reason why I engaged with his music so much is probably because his laid-back rapping style combined with the genius beats of Al Nather. Also in his music videos him and his friends / co-creators act just like anyone else, very down-to-earth, very chill and relatable. This could be me and my friends hanging out on a rooftop, except we’re free to leave our city or even the country anytime and not being interrupted by soldiers on a daily basis.
This is something I didn’t evidently understand until I watched this recent interview with him on the Lebanese video podcast channel Sarde After Dinner. While in general it’s an uplifting interview, it was a little eye-opening how people from two Arabic countries reflect on their representation in European media. The most crucial part though begins around 12 minutes, where Shabjdeed explains and jokes about living in the occupied West Bank in a very bitter and sarcastic way: “for example, if I don’t see 5 Range Rovers in a day, I get upset” and so on. It’s really worth your time to watch that part (~12-19 mins) and think about the differences in between the difficulties of their and our lives in Europe. It also makes me sad that just a month ago he was about to release his new album.
Through him and BLTNM I found numerous other great artists who I put on this buymusicclub list. This is of course a very incomplete collection, mainly containing other rappers, some more experimental things that stems from hip-hop, as well as two folk albums I just found this morning, under the #palestine tag on Bandcamp.
I also put a list together of recent charity albums and compilations, mostly coming from other artists from the Middle East. Buying some of these is I think the very least we can do as fellow artists. Feel free to link me more to include on both of these lists.
Two NTS shows are also worth mentioning which are regularly broadcasting from Palestine: Al Nather’s own and Palestinian Sound Archive, a label dedicated to reissueing and remixing vintage Arab vinyl and cassettes.
Other useful links and resources:
My great friend Tamás reflecting in this short but heart wrenching post about how it must feel to be an outcast, having no rights in the country where you live as a refugee and never being able to return your own homeland.
Al Jazeera’s insightful article about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Sadly I only saved a couple of reels and posts from the many I saw, but here they are:
- American Israeli woman speaks out against Israel’s atrocities
- filmmaker John Rizkallah publishes a short video footage he made as a child when they visited their family in Gaza in 2010
- independent reporter Richard Medhurst’s detailed video on how this ethnic cleansing is related to oil & gas business between Europe and Israel
- Toronto-based Palestinian cartoonist Sami Alwani’s personal reflection
- Working Class History’s posts: 1, 2, 3
Leftist publishing house Verso made their critical books on the zionist ideology, life in Palestine, etc. available for free as ebooks. Some further articles also included.
Enourmous movie database, This Light has a curated folder on censored documentaries about Palestine, made two years ago.
A Palestinian filmmaker that I’m about the check out is Elia Suleiman, who won the Jury’s Prize in Cannes in 2002 with his movie Divine Intervention, yet his films are constantly in danger of cencorship. His short movie Cyber Palestine is in this drive folder and his latest, It Must Be Heaven was easy to find.
Further documentaries:
Al Jazeera’s list
Factual America’s list
Since Gaza is now cut off from the rest of the world lacking internet and phone connection, I’m not sure if it goes through if you donate (Anera’s statement) to these organizations, but sharing these links anyway:
Medical Aid for Palestinians
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
Anera
Two more things:
I hope no readers come to the conclusion of me being anti-semitic for posting this, this is just pure nonsense to throw on people at this point. Even a big part of the Jewish community is in opposition of the carpet bombing and systematic killings that are happening now in Gaza. Listen to Rabbi Yisoroel Dovid Weis speaking out.
I think everyone has the right to be angry about the killings that happened on both sides. I only say that us, white Europeans, with little to no connection to the Arabic political situations, history and culture in general, should get educated before we’re shaping our sharp oppinions. Getting educated in the current climate of misinformation is a whole other topic though, I think the most reliable source might be the everyday people like you and me, who live in these places. Listen to them carefully and with an open heart.
Finally, I’m very open to discuss how we could help, as a Budapest community, through e.g. publishing / selling artworks or organizing charity gigs. Feel free to contact me about it.
As always, thanks for scrolling through. I hope you click on those links, listen to some of these brilliant people. I might also write that ‘recent music’ autumn post as well, but I felt I need this platform to organize my thoughts and to share something long-form.
ps.: even though I tried to be careful with wording, please note that this is only my second language and I might still have some mistakes in. Thanks for understanding, I hope this doesn’t distract the attention from my main points.