Blog post written by Yasmine Bouagga, touring around the Balkans and attending the Bienniale.

Originating from Shu'afat refugee camp in Jerusalem, Fadi Ammous, Alaa Baramiyeh and Mohammad Mughrabi, from the Palestinian hip-hop band G-town, fired up the audience with a strong beat and great atmosphere. Their lyrics are not always about happiness and partying though: the song Gaza-Ghazzé for example talks about the plight of Palestinians under bombing and the passivity of the international community.

What do you think about the Biennale, what are your impressions?

G-town. It is a very interesting festival that brings together different cultures, and all kinds of artists... we met a lot of people from different countries, like Egypt, Lebanon, but also Italian breakdancers. I couldn't meet all of the 700 artists, unfortunately! Besides, Skopje is really a beautiful city, very young and dynamic. We love it, we made some Macedonian friends...

Turning now to what you do: when and why did you start the band?

We started in 2002, it was the beginning of Palestinian hip hop, it was really amazing. At that time we started to think that nobody is talking about what we feel: we live in a refugee camp near Jerusalem, in Shu'afat. It is very difficult there, there is a lot of violence, drugs, racists and there is no police because it is in the middle of the border: there is no Israeli police and no Palestinian police, that's a ghetto, this is where our band's name come from. It is a big town, of 60.000 people in a very small area. So we express ourselves about our problems, our dreams... So we met like this, the music made our friendship. And we share the same belief that music can bring together the whole world...

Do you have some support for artistic expression in Palestine?

We don't have support from the Palestinian authority, we came to the festival through the help of NGOs working in the field of arts. But things are not easy, it took us 7 years to record and release our first album. The internet was very useful to spread out our music. For example it is easier for people in Gaza to go on the website to listen to the music than for us to go there. Also we organize workshops for youngsters in refugee camps, and last month we had one for Gaza, through videoconference.

What do people think of your music in Palestine?

They love it, we make big concerts, with thousands of people, we became really famous: this is the music of the next generation. But even the old generation likes it because we try to build something on our traditional music, we use the arabic sounds in our music. So of course our parents' generation is not used to hip hop but they like our lyrics, for us words are the most important, we work a lot on our texts. We don't talk about girls, beautiful cars and money, we don't have cars! Or even if we have we don't talk about that: we are more concerned about our political problems.

So what do you think music can change?

Music can bring revolution: it will wake up Palestinian youth, make them aware of the situation, and remember their history, the exile, the loss of our land. Also we want to break the stereotype about Palestinians, people around the world believe we are terrorists, we want to show we are normal... We went on tours in various countries, we were in France recently, people are surprised sometimes to see that we are Palestinians and we can do hip-hop! Music is very important for us, it is a way to resist, it is the "Palestinian martial art". We don't want to go throw stones and get shot in the head: we want to teach Palestinians how to fight for their right. But at the same time music is relaxing for us: it makes us feel better to be able to express ourselves.