Mohamed Antar
Mohammed Antar is a hip-hop artist whose aim is to take the Palestinian cause around the world through Arabic hip-hop.
Antar is an artist working in many creative fields. From a young age, he has been writing poetry and drama scripts, reciting poetry, as well as choreographing dance performances. He worked as a theatre actor for five years and participated in several plays. As an actor, he travelled to Italy as part of a twinning project between the Municipality of Gaza and the Municipality of Turin.
Antar started his musical career as a rap artist in 2004 and released his first track, The Dark in 2005 (https://soundcloud.com/antar-sound/el-3atmah-2005?in=antar-sound/sets/2005-2008 ). Later, he joined a group by the name of DA (short for “Dead Army”) composed of three members who jointly issued an album entitled Alienation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXFykrKPoBc).
In 2007, Antar, together with Sami Bakhit, Mohammed al-Masri, and Bassam Masri, founded the music group DARG TEAM. They were joined by beat maker Ma’rouf, darbaka player Shahbandar and a photographer (QD). In 2008, they came out with the album Bel Ghorba (“Outlandish”). The group won the HipHopkm, the first national competition for local hip-hop. During the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-2009, DARG came out with the first subtitled music video documenting the events.
In 2009-2010, DARG TEAM became the protagonists of the documentary Aisheen (“Still Alive in Gaza”) by Swiss directors Nicolas Wadimoff and Beatrice Guelpa. For the second part of the documentary, entitled Gaza Meets Geneva, documenting a musical encounter between Gaza and Geneva, the group travelled to Switzerland to record the sound track for the documentary in Geneva. (http://www.youtube.com/user/dargmcz?feature=watch)
DARG went on to participate in a competition in a twinning project between the Municipality of Gaza and the municipality of Tromsø in Norway. What ensued was a performance tour through Europe (Switzerland, France, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Denmark), during which time they also released three tracks online.
After the tour, the members all went their own way, with Antar choosing to pursue his career as a rapper from December 2010. He joined up with rapper and actor Majd Antar and together created the team Antara, which focused on political hip-hop.
Their tracks sought to solve Palestinian political, social, physiological, financial and environmental problems in a non-violent way and to spread a new theory of freedom of speech by expressing what the Antara members felt. Antara issued a set of political songs within the popular movement to end the Palestinian divisions. The team’s ambitions are to make Palestinian hip-hop one of the strongest in the world, and to link the Eastern and Western world through outstanding Arabic hip-hop.
In 2013, Antar did a tour of Brazil. Since 2014, he is residing in Cairo, Egypt. He has participated in the Yalla Fann workshop series that aimed to raise awareness about sexual harassment using the arts. The workshop taught the basics of rap, while making sexual harassment the central focus of the song that was composed with the participants.
Antar is currently working on the release of a new solo album .
Websites :
Mohammed Antar 