Songwriter & Composer
I am a songwriter and composer from Palestine. I was born in the diaspora and lived in several Arab capitals. I returned to Palestine, where I lived in the city of Ramallah for 25 years.
Palestine is a place full of stories, stories of prophets and gods, stories of good and evil, stories of occupation and resistance, and stories of people, which are what constitute the identity of the place... its people.
What prompted me to work in the beginning was what I thought was a lack of modern Palestinian songs. The Palestinian in Palestinian art, or in general, is a mixture between the hero and the victim, and I believe that the Palestinian is something in between, so I sang from that position... I am not a hero and I don't want to be a victim.
Supported by a strong Arabic language, nurtured by a great poet as a father, a poet grandfather, and a family that speaks Classical Arabic fluently, many feelings from childhood and in Palestine, to which returning was like a dream come true. After several years of the return, I released my first album in 2008 under the title About a Country, a number of songs in the colloquial dialect, accompanied by my friend Imad Al-Sayrafi.
The album describes the Palestinian scene from the inside, the state of waiting for the invasion that was still affecting our streets, our souls and our homes, our hopes that had not been completely shattered yet at that time.
I am still working on songs that I can call Palestinian songs that are committed to the Palestinian concern and talk about Palestinian hopes, both daily and distant. The songs are free, like talking about a place we have not yet reached or do not know, as if they are describing the atmosphere of what will be, its color, its sound... All the songs come from the homeland and go directly to it.
