Palestinian acoustic rap enchants Amman crowd

AMMAN — Tareq Abu Kwaik, better known by his stage name El Farai, played two concerts in Amman last week. On Monday, he performed in the sold-out Al Shams Theatre and on Thursday in Portico Resto-Pub.

The Palestinian songwriter, drummer, rapper and producer from Jordan is currently based in the UK. In Amman, he performed as a solo artist singing and playing the guitar.

“I love Arabic rap music, and I think we should support musicians from Jordan,” a fan, 29-year-old Ayman Assad from Amman, told The Jordan Times on Saturday.

To Assad, El Farai’s lyrics are especially important and he knows them by heart. “I attended a concert a couple of months ago. I was in the first line and when El Farai forgot his lyrics, he kept tracking my lips. I met him afterwards and he said, ‘you are my lyrical back-up.’ I felt so honoured,” he said.

El Farai is even better known as co-founder and member of Shamstep Super Group 47Soul, and as co-founder and past member of Arabic music group El Morabba. El Morabba is a rock music band that was formed in Jordan in 2009 and released its debut album in 2012. 

47Soul has existed since 2013 until today. Its four members all have Palestinian roots. Its music is also associated with dabke (traditional dance) and the lyrics of its songs are in English and Arabic. 

Their first album, “Shamstep” was released in 2015. The group was formed in Jordan, but then moved to the UK, where they released their second album, “Balfron Promise”, in 2017.

47soul had a big role in forming the “Shamstep” electronic dance music movement in the Middle East, shamstep being a term that the band made up. 

In an interview with Middle East Eye in 2018, El Farai talked about 47Soul’s satirical song “Locked Up Shop”, which tells the story of a man getting a haircut in the middle of a riot. “I don’t call [politics] my subject, it’s the seasoning in the flavour of everything I write,” he is quoted as saying.

Ala Jamal Zahrawi, a 33-year-old from Amman, attended both concerts of El Farai last week. “Politics is very important to his music. For rap music in general, politics is always a key,” Zahrawi told the The Jordan Times on Saturday.

Zahrawi said that El Farai represents his generation of young people who grew up in Amman. “He expresses our concerns about what is going on in the region,” he stated, adding that he appreciates that as a rapper he is very clear about his statements, while never cursing or insulting anyone. “His music means a lot to me,” he said.