Palestine Liberation Music and the Emergence of Palestinian Hip-Hop

Abstract

The study examined the process of Palestinian hip-hop's emergence throughout the history and its role as a powerful political resistance weapon in the framework of the ‘social register' theory proposed by Asif Agha in 1999 and the ‘footing' theory proposed by Erving Goffman in 1979. Two objectives were stated for this study: to apply the ‘historical formation' and the ‘social interactive' perspective proposed in Agha's ‘register theory' in the social register of Palestinian hip-hop music; to show the effectiveness of Palestinian hip-hop music as a political weapon. The research methods employed in this study are self-designed online surveys taken by a total of 89 people living in Palestine or Israel, original Palestinian hip-hop music lyrics and online Palestine liberation music archives. The results of the study suggests that Palestinian hip-hop is indeed a strong political weapon as a social register and that the in the future of Palestinian hip-hop would possibly become more and more prosperous. In addition, the analysis of the study shows the feasibility of applying anthropological theories into real-life cases.