Singing Against Silence: Palestinian Music And It’s Fight Against Occupation

Every Palestinian story is a political act.

Edward Said

In all kinds of peace and war, music is produced and consumed every day. While the colonizer sings the triumphs of their wins, the colonized sing their hopes for triumph. The difference, however, is that the colonizer always tries to silence the colonized.

For Palestinians, this struggle is ongoing. Unlike nations that celebrate post-independence anniversaries, Palestine is still living under a colonial condition. The people are still on the long road of survival, resistance, liberation, and the pursuit of national independence.

Music as Memory Since the Nakba

The Nakba of 1948, the mass displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians, didn’t just destroy homes and towns; it ripped communities from their cultural foundations. In refugee camps, song became a way to keep memories alive. Traditional folk songs like Zareef al-Tool carried more than melodies. They carried the names of villages wiped from the map, the smell of olive groves, and the sound of marketplaces long gone.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Palestinian refugees scattered across Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan used music as a lifeline to their lost homeland. Weddings weren’t just celebrations. They were moments of political affirmation. Dabke dances stomped defiance into the ground, and lyrics wove tales of longing and the right to return. In this way, music became what historian Ted Swedenburg calls a “living archive” of the Palestinian experience.

Music Under the Colonial Condition

Palestinians are a unique case, as their history is still unfolding. A long road of survival, resistance, liberation, and national independence. Music is inevitably tied to history. It is humanity’s way of adapting to events and consequences. One can read history in music, and Palestinian history is one of the only modern national narratives to be entirely shaped under foreign occupation.

This doesn’t mean Palestinian ears only turn to Palestinian music. On the contrary, today’s average Palestinian might listen to Fairuz and Nancy Ajram from Lebanon, Sherine and Um Kulthum from Egypt, or Kathem ElSaher from Iraq. Cross-cultural exchange keeps Palestinian music dynamic.

No matter the influences, the Israeli occupation remains the omnipresent force shaping cultural production. In Gaza, music studios are bombed. In the West Bank, permits are denied for concerts. In East Jerusalem, street performers face harassment and arrest. For Palestinian artists in Israel, the industry is gatekept by political red tape. And for the diaspora, art is policed by global platforms.

Remember Mohammed Assaf and his breakout on Arab Idol? His song “Dammi Falastini” (“My Blood is Palestinian”) became an anthem—raw, emotional, unfiltered. In 2015, Apple Music and Spotify pulled the track from their platforms, claiming it “incited against Israel.” Assaf’s response? “This accusation increases my honour and belonging to my homeland, Palestine, and my just cause.” His music, and the massive global audience it reaches, refuses to sanitize Palestinian identity to fit colonial comfort.

The silencing of Dammi Falastini was not an isolated case but part of a broader pattern in which Palestinian narratives are suppressed on digital platforms, at concerts, and even within academic spaces. And yet, every act of censorship tends to amplify the songs even more. The very attempt to erase them only confirms their political power.

DAM: From Hebrew to Arabic

If folk songs hold the memory of the Nakba, Palestinian hip-hop holds the voice of the intifadas. DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop group, started off performing in English, Arabic, and Hebrew lyrics and even played clubs in Tel Aviv, partially to communicate with Israeli audiences. But as political tensions rose, especially during the Second Intifada, they realized the irony: singing in Hebrew allowed Israeli audiences to hear their protest without ever unpacking its meaning. So they quit Hebrew, choosing only Arabic and English.

In a 2024 Guardian interview, they revealed why they stopped: performing in Hebrew risked softening the radical edge of their message. As Tamer Nafar, one of the founding members, explained, “It was a strategic decision, a return to Arabic and English to reclaim control over how our music was understood, and by whom”. It was more than language; it was reclaiming narrative, refusing to make their art digestible to the occupier’s comfort zone. In their own words: “As Palestinians… our lives are dictated by politics. There’s no way around it.”

DAM’s shift represents a broader phenomenon in Palestinian art: the decision to stop centering the occupier in cultural production. Instead, the focus is on internal solidarity, Arab unity, and international alliances, using music to strengthen Palestinian cultural sovereignty rather than negotiating its terms with colonial power.

How The Diaspora Keeps the Sound Alive

Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean pop and R&B artist, often sings in Arabic, blending Western production with Middle Eastern rhythms. While her style is very different from DAM’s hip hop or Assaf’s patriotic anthems, her resistance is embedded in her choice to keep Arabic lyrics and Palestinian identity front and center in a global pop market that often pressures Arab artists to switch to English or dilute cultural references. She represents a newer, global-facing chapter in Palestinian music resistance.

For Palestinians in the diaspora, especially younger generations, Elyanna’s music is a reminder that cultural identity doesn’t have to be tied to a specific genre or traditional sound to still carry political meaning. In a way, her success in mainstream global stages, from singing in Arabic at Coachella to appearing in major fashion magazines while openly naming Palestine as her home, disrupts the erasure that colonial narratives try to impose.

The Music of Survival

Ultimately, music in Palestine is not merely a backdrop to daily life. It’s a battlefield of memory, belonging, and defiance. From folk songs passed down since before 1948 to the global beats of DAM and the anthems of Mohamed Assaf, every lyric carries the weight of a people refusing to be erased. It speaks to the world in Arabic, in beats, in stubborn melodies that insist: we are still here. Colonial powers may seize land, censor art, and try to rewrite history, but as long as Palestinians sing, their story cannot be silenced. In the face of occupation, every note is an act of survival, and every chorus is a promise that liberation will come