by mustafasDAM Live at The Freedom Theatre
Hip Hop, Resistance, and the Sound of a Generation
On Monday, 14 July 2008, The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp, Palestine, hosted a landmark cultural event featuring the first-ever live performance of DAM in Jenin. The concert marked a defining moment in the intersection of Palestinian hip hop, youth culture, and cultural resistance.
Founded in the late 1990s, DAM is internationally recognized as the first Palestinian rap group and one of the most influential voices in the Arab and global hip hop movement. Performing on The Freedom Theatre’s stage, DAM presented music rooted in lived Palestinian realities, identity, dispossession, resistance, and the urgent search for freedom, articulated through sharp lyricism and uncompromising political presence.
One of the most powerful moments of the evening was DAM’s live performance of “I Don’t Have Freedom”, delivered directly from the stage of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin. The performance stands today as a documented cultural testimony, capturing a rare convergence of place, voice, and historical moment.
🎥 Archival video documentation of DAM’s first live performance in Jenin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eX68JEigNU
The concert was preceded by a screening of “Slingshot Hip Hop”, the first feature-length documentary dedicated to the Palestinian hip hop movement. The film offers an unfiltered window into a generation of Palestinian and Arab youth navigating occupation, marginalization, and self-expression through global urban culture, while redefining contemporary Palestinian identity beyond imposed narratives.
By hosting DAM and presenting Slingshot Hip Hop, The Freedom Theatre reaffirmed its role as a critical cultural institution, a space where local Palestinian voices meet global artistic movements, and where theatre and music function as tools of cultural resistance, political consciousness, and community empowerment. The event resonated far beyond Jenin, speaking to audiences across Palestine and the diaspora, the Arab world, the Middle East, and the Global South, as well as Europe and the United States.
Event Details
📅 Monday, 14 July 2008
⏰ 16:30
📍 The Freedom Theatre, Jenin Refugee Camp – Occupied Palestine
For further information and archival inquiries:
📞 +970 4 2503345
📧 info@thefreedomtheatre.org