Ramallah Underground

Fri 23rd Oct, 2009 in Features

A common way to begin an interview is to ask the subject where you’re talking to them from. “Ramallah in Palestine,” I am told by Boikutt. He is one of three members of West Bank Palestinian hip hop group Ramallah Underground.

The trio has largely developed their reputation amongst their international fanbase by posting videos and samples of their music online through their website. It’s gotten them a lot of attention with the trio filling invitations to perform through Europe, Asia, the US and now in Australia for the first time alongside Anti Pop Consortium legend Beans and Sydneysiders Ro Sham Bo for a one off show as a part of the Melbourne Festival this month.

I ask Boikutt to describe Ramallah to me, which he hesitates to do. I’m unsure of why; after all, how hard can it be to describe the physical features of a city? After a moment’s consideration, Boikutt continues and as we talk, I discover a passion for music forged as much out of necessity as the desire for artistic expression, which almost perfectly mirrors the Bronx in the 1970s from where hip hop originally came.

Can you describe Ramallah to me, because obviously we don’t hear as much about Palestine as we probably should in Australia.
It’s difficult to describe. It’s the result of 60 years of occupation and colonization. We live inside a lot of check points, there are Israeli settlements on the hilltops. It’s basically like a normal town, but we have a lot of negative things around here. The apartheid war started here about 6 years ago. It’s like you live in a cage. There are many attempts to normalize the situation, but they’re probably not going to work. That’s pretty much how it is.

Living in that sort of environment, people must feel like they have a lot to say and release. Are young people encouraged to express themselves through music?
Definitely. A lot of people are expressing themselves through music and through different forms of art. A lot of people write and a lot of people make movies. Actually the biggest scenes here are filmmaking and photography. Music is not as big as the other arts in Palestine, but it’s growing rapidly. The sad thing is though, that a lot of people don’t feel that there is any point to expressing themselves through arts and do not have hope. That’s something were trying to break and motivate through our music.

So the music scene isn’t huge, but is hip hop one of the bigger genres? Does its aggression and expression mean a lot of Palestinian’s enjoying it?
Definitely. At the moment it’s the biggest genre of music being used by the youth. Before it there was jazz, also rock music. But now the focus is on hip hop and you find a lot of kids are starting to rap also because it’s a lot easier than other forms of music to create. All you need is a computer or a turntable to make some beats, and a microphone. I think it’s one of the most direct forms of music to express yourself and to say what’s really on your mind.

Are there many acts in Palestine or is it just one or two major acts speaking for the larger group?
At the moment, there is a hip hop group in every town, in every neighborhood so it’s really growing. I don’t know how many of them are taking it seriously, but it definitely exists now and is moving forward so it should be quite big soon.

What do Ramallah Underground write about? What are you trying to express and what do you like to get across with your lyrics?
We have a lot of tracks that are descriptive, say how a person feels when they cross a check point and how humiliating that is. How a person feels when he is kicked out of his house and there is someone else who is an occupier or a colonizer who comes and take it over. How it feels to live in a refugee camp and all of a sudden the camp is being destroyed by the Israeli army. We also talk about social things, like how there is not much hope in the youth today. They don’t have much hope, they aren’t optimistic so we try to change that. We try to encourage people to read, write, resist, talk, say what’s on your mind, pick up an instrument etc. These are the kinds of things we talk about. We try to be positive and optimistic amongst all this negativity.

You’ve taken your music all around the world. How has that been for you and how has your music been reieved?
We’ve learned a lot from all the concerts that we’ve done, and we’ve met a lot of people. You know, people come up to us after a show is done, and because we’re rapping in Arabic they say, “We don’t know what you were rapping about, we would love to know.” And we’d tell them our situation and sometimes get into discussions, even arguments. I think that’s very healthy, it’s pushed us forward a lot and helped us develop our music. We’ve got a lot of feedback, sometimes criticism which has been great. It’s made us what we are today.

One of your lyrics is, “I’m gonna flip off the world because they keep talking but they’re never going to do anything”. Do you feel that you’re motivating action through your music, or is that still a constant frustration?
It is definitely frustrating you know, because obviously so many people are just talking about it. So many politicians are just exploiting our situation and exploiting our cause just for popularity and for power. A lot of organizations are doing that too. A lot of individuals also. But there are also a lot of people doing what they can to make the situation better, to try to fix this whole mess that we’re in. And we don’t just call for action for Palestine, it’s not as localized as it sounds. We use Palestine because it’s what is around us, but we also talk about things like poverty. People living in very poor conditions in places like Africa, for example and other Arab countries, Eastern Europe, even the States you have people living under very harsh conditions.

Between the three of you, what’s the process when you go to create music?
We don’t exactly have an exact format or default process, it depends on what happens. Sometimes we hear a beat or one of us produces a really sweet beat and we’ll say “Ok, it will probably work if we talk about the war on Lebanon,” for example. Or we can just come up with an idea and say, “Let’s talk about this, it’s something that’s been bothering me so lets talk about it.’ So we sit for a few minutes, then we start writing about it. Then we might browse some of our old beats to see if they might suit it or we’ll come up with something new and find a sample to start making a beat etc. So it really depends, every time it’s different to be honest.

You’ve previously released your songs online, which has gotten you a lot of attention. Do you have a collection of songs you want to turn into an album or do you like the idea of distributing using online media as a means to take your music to the widest possible audience?
I think having our tracks online has helped us to get these gigs in Europe and other places in the world, because people can listen to it and own our tracks. We are thinking of releasing an album, which will have all new tracks not on the website, but then we’ll also still be uploading tracks to the website. Even when we do release the album there will still be tracks at Ramallah Underground.com

What are you looking forward to while you are here?
I don’t know man, I just like to check it out and see what’s there. I usually don’t have anything to look forward to so I just like to see what’s in front on me, go with the flow and see what happens. I’m really looking forwards to the Melbourne arts festival though, it seems like a really interesting festival and there are a lot of acts I’d like to check out.

Ramallah Underground play Beck’s Rumpus Room at the Forum Theatre on Friday 23rd October along with Beans and Ro Sham Bo.