The Industry from the Artists’ Perspective: Production, Publishing, and Needs in Palestine
Written by Dina Salem
Participants at the Palestine Music Conference
On September 21, The Palestine Music Conference (PMC) held a joint panel discussion titled “The Industry from the Artists’ Perspective: Production, Publishing, and Needs in Palestine” as part of its two-day program in Ramallah, Palestine. The panel featured an assembly of renowned Palestinian musicians including Makimakkuk, Marwan Halabi, Tarek Abboushi, and Majd Hajjaj, alongside Maya Khalidi as moderator.
At the heart of the discussion were the main challenges that Palestinian musicians are forced to confront through the course of their careers, in Palestine and globally. Amid the rich and diverse music scene in Palestine, artists often have to multitask the process of composing, producing, promoting, and distributing their work. As Majd Hajjaj, Delia Arts Foundation representative, noted, “Artists don't have to be and do everything,” stressing the need for institutional and community support that could provide resources to alleviate artists from the burden of self-management. The Delia Foundation works towards implementing this goal by providing funding and training opportunities for musicians who lack access to resources in the MENA region and beyond. Through its cultural center in Gaza, the foundation offers artists a professional recording studio and access to workshops, as well as a network of other talents like managers, producers, and distributors that can potentially allow them to make music their full-time profession.
The stark discrepancies between the cultural life in the West Bank relative to Gaza and the occupied 48 cities mean that artists experience radically different circumstances and challenges. Musicians in Gaza, as Hajjaj put it, encounter further difficulties due to their imposed geographical and cultural isolation from the rest of Palestine, which limits their audience reach and access to knowledge-sharing through ecosystems, mentorship programs, and funding opportunities. This cultural fragmentation is very much a byproduct of the imposed restrictions on movement by the Israeli occupation, which not only denies artists the possibility of accessing spaces and creative opportunities but also makes the possibility of having a collective space that joins artists from all across Palestine extremely difficult. A case in point is how musicians in Gaza are denied the possibility of performing in major urban centers in the occupied 48 cities like Haifa and Yaffa, or even cities like Ramallah, where the main locus for art, culture, and music in the West Bank finds its home.
On the other hand, musicians in the occupied 48 cities, as Haifa-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist Marwan Halabi described, are forced to live in a state of contradiction, where much of their social and cultural life without a doubt functions in spite of the hegemonic and state-funded Zionist cultural scene. Within the complex landscape of Palestine, artists actively refuse and boycott funding, collaborations and work with Zionist institutions, and depend on the handful of independent Palestinian spaces, primarily in Haifa, a city where only 11% of the population is made up of Palestinians. This limitation is even more pronounced when artists who hold an Israeli passport like Halabi want to perform in neighboring Arab states like Lebanon, denying them opportunities to grow and connect with the larger music scene in the region, and to benefit from funding opportunities available to their counterparts in the West Bank.
In the absence of legitimate state institutions and a legal framework that protects freedom of expression, musicians, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, so often face social admonition and intimidation that it has become a common concern when performances are scheduled and announced. In the Summer of 2022, for instance, a small concert featuring Jerusalem-based pop singer Bachar Murad, whose music is known for addressing gender equality and LGBTQ rights, was forcibly disrupted after dozens of unknown perpetrators stormed the concert, and physically assaulted the artist, attendees, and the venue where the concert was held. Al-Mustawda3, once one of Ramallah’s last remaining independent cultural spaces, and where Murad had been invited to perform, announced its closure shortly after the incident, further diminishing the already limited opportunities for artists and musicians to showcase their talents and to connect with local audiences. Similar incidents were reported across Palestine, forcing musicians to turn elsewhere, more often than not to go abroad, in order to grow their base.
Bachar Murad
Another sentiment was echoed by the panelists with regard to institutional support offered to musicians. Music producer, performing artist, and DJ, Makimakkuk, who is a key figure and one of the pioneers in the underground music scene in Ramallah, spoke candidly about her entry into the early years of the scene and her experience with the community that was beginning to form around music in Ramallah. “We were young and we didn’t have a plan or strategy. We didn’t care about institutions and the industry. It was organic and natural,” she stated.
Makimakkuk
The growing music community then began to host parties and later participate in open calls, residencies, and workshops. When artists, including Makimakkuk herself, began to step outside the local party scene and work on independent projects and events, music became a career. “Artists need to know that they have a right to negotiate their contracts if they find them unfair, they sometimes forget that,” said Makimakkuk, adding that record labels are no different than a factory, where musicians and artists are akin to laborers who sell their work for little in return, so knowledge around copyrights, publishing and distributing rights is essential for young artists stepping into the game.
In a concluding statement, Makimakkuk pointed that Palestine’s music community is still taking shape, and rather than simply adopt the accepted and standardised business model that is behind the global music industry as we know it today, there is an opportunity to build a competing model, one that doesn’t just rely on exploitative record labels and serves popular genres of music. As Makimakkuk said, “Instead of centralizing our practice, we should be decentralizing it. I am a “DIY artist,” I do everything and learn everything by myself. It is exhausting to do everything as an artist, but I prefer it to having someone define my art and exploit my art for their profit. If we are chasing after the global music industry, we are missing out as artists.
Overall, the panel discussion pushed forth the reality that Palestinian artists from all across Palestine experience. The stark disparities between the West Bank, Gaza, and the occupied 48 cities underscore the various concerns musicians encounter, from their imposed isolation from one another and the limited audience reach, to the cultural and social pressures they face within their own communities. This is coupled with the panelists’ emphasis on the absence of a supportive infrastructure in place, a task that organizations like Delia Arts Foundation tackles head on through hubs and ecosystems that are designed to meet the specific and differing needs of artists across occupied Palestine.
More importantly, the closing remarks by Makimakkuk encapsulate a call for a decentralized approach in building a home-grown and independent Palestinian industry with an entirely new and radical model, urging artists to resist adopting the pitfalls of mainstream industries in the West. This call raises the question behind the possible methods, tools and community frameworks that can be shaped around the need for alternative ways of imagining music, a challenge that takes on an entirely different meaning in the settler-colonial context of Palestine.
