Tamer Nafar

Tamer Nafar
Tamer Nafar- Ynet News, 2016.
Background information
Born	June 6, 1979
Origin	Lod, Israel
Genres	Hip hop, Political hip-hop
Occupation(s)	Rapper, Actor, Screenwriter, Social Activist
Years active	1999–present
Associated acts	DAM
Website	Facebook Page, DAM Official Website

Tamer Nafar (born June 6, 1979) is a Palestinian rapper, actor, screenwriter and social activist.

He was born to Fawzi Nafar and Nadia Awadi and grew up in Lyd .

Tamer Nafar, being the leader of the world's first Palestinian hip-hop group DAM, has become the face and primary voice of Palestinian hip-hop and has been internationally recognized through worldwide tours.

Tamer discovered hip-hop when he was only 17 through Tupac Amaru Shakur's songs, and started to learn English while memorizing Tupac's lyrics and translating them into Arabic using an English-Arabic dictionary. When he wrote verses, he wanted most of the words to rhyme even though they often made little sense.

Tamer recorded his first single "Untouchable," a reference to "The Untouchables” movie. 

In 1998, Tamer released his first EP "Stop Selling Drugs," featuring his younger brother, Suhell. 

In 2000, their friend Mahmood Jreri joined the Nafar brothers to establish the first Palestinian hip-hop group and among the most successful in the Middle East.

The trio named themselves “Da Arab MCs” to create the acronyms DAM, a word that means “lasting” or “persisting” in Arabic and “blood” in Hebrew (דם).  In an interview for Democracy Now (2008), Tamer Nafar said that the group’s name suggest “eternal blood, like we will stay here forever,” evoking a politics of resilience and survival (or دام - sumood, in Arabic). 

They are the grandchildren of those who experienced the Nakba and the children of those who mobilized the Palestinian minority in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s.  It is a generation that is assertively challenging the ongoing erasure and repression of their Palestinian identities; one that has taken up the cause of Palestinian self-determination as well as issues of racism and inequality.