An Interview with a Palestinian-American Rapper (he ain't on the sofa)

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/junaid07312004.html

The Iron Sheik (aka Will Youmans)

In the lyrics to your rap music, you strongly identify with and support the
Palestinian cause, fiercely oppose the war in Iraq, and fire rhetorical salvos
against the Bush administration. Did you develop your politics and then find
music as an avenue of expressing them, or did you first get into rapping and
then develop radical politics?

My first musical influence besides the Beatles was Public Enemy. So I came to
know music as political expression. Because of Public Enemy, my first political
consciousness was centered on American race relations. My early sense of
justice gave me a sense of outrage at the American history against blacks,
Native peoples, Mexicans, Chinese, etc.

My political views on the Middle East, my sense of injustice there, developed
separately, but the underlying principles were always the same as my views on the US domestic scene. Groups were treated unequally. My views on the Arab world and US foreign policy came a bit later. Later on in college, the
political music of the Arab world inspired my already strongly held views and
showed me how effective political music can be, especially since it is so
underground and inaccessible in the States.

I definitely started rapping before I became an activist. But only recently did
it occur to me to combine the two.

-snip-

You take a pretty defiant, aggressive approach with your music, taking direct aim at some main reactionary propagandists, cutting to the core of Israeli myths, and adopting the moniker of 'Iron Sheik', which first belonged to a professional wrestler who played the stereotypical 'Middle-Eastern bad guy' in the 70's. Do you find it therapeutic, to any extent, to sort of turn the tables by using irony and the anti-Arab racism of the right-wing to show how hollow their own arguments are?

Taking the name feels good. It is a form of resistance. It is like beating back an invader who claims ownership over your cultural space. The Iron Sheik, as a caricature, bastardized our culture, vilified us as a people, and did it all for money. That whole idea of exploiting stereotypes for money disgusts me. We
need to take back those ideas and stereotypes and mock the crap out of them. In another sense, a Sheik is a learned or respected individual, and my knowledge is my strength. It is Iron. MC's like to battle, well I will debate anyone, anywhere on Israel-Palestine, and I will win. Few can command the facts like I do. And, people who really know, they come down on the right side. Those who do not, lose morally.

-snip-
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go rappers!

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

1. This is cool...i see he does draw on Arab musical sources, too.

Thanks for the intel on this!