Tamer Nafar

Tamer Nafar (Arabic: تامر نفار, Hebrew: תאמר נפאר; born June 6, 1979) is a Palestinian rapper, actor, screenwriter and social activist of Israeli citizenship. He is the leader and a founding member of DAM, the first Palestinian hip hop group. Nafar was born to Fawzi Nafar and Nadia Awadi. He grew up in Lod, a mixed Arab-Israeli city in Israel plagued by drug smuggling and crime. Tamer discovered hip-hop at age 17, when he began learning English by listening to Tupac and translating his lyrics to Arabic using an English-Arabic dictionary. Tamer recorded his first single "Untouchable", a reference to The Untouchables movie. In 1998, Tamer released his first EP Stop Selling Drugs, featuring his younger brother Suhell. In 2000, their friend Mahmood Jreri joined the Nafar brothers to establish DAM, the first Palestinian hip-hop group. The trio named themselves Da Arab MCs to create the acronyms DAM, a word that means lasting or persisting in Arabic and blood in Hebrew (דם). In an interview for Democracy Now (2008), Tamer said that the group's name suggested “eternal blood, like we will stay here forever,” evoking a politics of resilience and survival (or دام - sumood, in Arabic). The group members are the grandchildren of those who experienced the Nakba and the children of those who mobilized the Arab minority in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. This generation is challenging the insults to Palestinian identity and advocates Palestinian self-determination while objecting to racism and inequality. DAM is notable for their ability to rap in English, Arabic and Hebrew. The group first rapped in English and then in Hebrew as the words flowed better this way. DAM understood that their potential for meaningful social impact depends on their ability to express their message in Arabic, Hebrew and English, drawing upon vernacular phrases, slang, obscenities and indigenous references to each cultural frame. In this way, DAM is able to reach disparate audiences. On September 3, 2000, Tamer's friend Booba (Hussam Abu Gazazae) was killed during a drive-by shooting, an incident that drove Tamer to record his first protest song with a political reference, despite the fact that his friend had been killed by an Arab. A cover of Abd al Majeed Abdalla's song "Ya Tayeb al Galb", the song was called "Booba" and featured Ibrahim Sakallah on the hook.