Liminal Politics: Nation, Gender, and Leisure in the "alternative" Palestinian Music Scene

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"I don't care where you're from; where you at?" sing 47Soul on their 2015 single "Don't Care Where You From". Comprised of four Palestinian men, their words stress outlook - rather than location - is what matters when forming personal and collective identities. Mapping subjectivities beyond the nation, their lyrics galvanise a music scene proliferating among Palestinian youth. Spread across the Levant, and sometimes showcased internationally, this self-titled "alternative" community defies rigid categorisation. Those networked to it fuse local Arabic repertoires, with global electronic, reggae, and hip-hop beats, to produce a 'new' genre. Research on Palestinian popular music, however, normally presents Palestinian music through two frames: as folkloric identity, or as national resistance. This literature focuses on hip-hop cultures, despite the fact that musicians make many different types of music (e.g. glitch, techno, trip-hop, reggae, psy-trance, shamstep, electro-dabke). In these works, rap is presented as a tool youth use to resist Israeli occupation, and/or build national identities. My research offers a different interpretation of Palestinian popular music that critiques these straightjackets. Moving beyond dominant representations of Palestinian art, it considers when music may not be about national protest, or resistance identities. The research stems from two years qualitative fieldwork (2012, 2014, 2017-2018) in four different cities with large Palestinian communities: Jerusalem (oPt), Ramallah (oPt), Amman (the Jordanian capital and home to many Palestinian refugees), and Haifa (a Palestinian-majority town in modern-day Israel). Focused on the contemporary moment, it draws on 100 interviews with young musicians, DJs, and their fans, and 200 participant observations at the concerts, parties, and bars they frequent. It explores how and in what way youth negotiate 'everyday' social and political power structures through music.My findings show that the music looks different in distinct contexts. Locally, many young adults are fed up. The 1993 Oslo Peace Process has not delivered peace, and trust in the national leadership is at an all-time low. Many youth use music to express frustration with what they perceive to be the political elite's hollowing out of the Palestinian national movement for liberation. Instead of using their work to convey nationalist sentiments, they deploy it to reject top-down nationalisms. However, while political content is foreground, it is not the only issue youth are concerned with. Reluctant to have their music appreciated only because it is Palestinian - rather than because it sounds good - many emphasise that they are musicians who "happen to be" Palestinian, rather than Palestinian musicians. Music, they claim, is a source of fun; they use it to flout various gendered orders (e.g. holding music parties where alcohol, drugs, flirting, and dancing takes place).Analysing Palestinian performances in non-local spaces reveals a different picture. When musicians perform in London, they are "branded" in particular ways. Their self-representations, or the representations their international hosts circulate of them, privilege identities distanced from locally. This happens in two ways: 'world' music events present musicians as 'exotic others', or solidarity networks confine them to national frameworks. This points to links in 'race' discourse, capitalism, and music labelled 'political'/'world' as it travels.The project makes two arguments. First, scene members perform unconventional identities beyond dominant norms through music. Second, geopolitical power often shapes how Palestinian music travels. Critically positioning cultural production in the transnational contexts that inform, and are informed by, such aesthetic practices, this study situates Palestinian music beyond narrow national perspectives, to ask instead what its circulation reveals about translocal power structures.