DUBAI: California-based part-Palestinian artist Saint Levant this year will make his debut at Coachella, the popular music festival held annually in California.
The musician, famous for his hits “Maghreb,” “Very Few Friends” and “Tell Me I’m Dreaming,” will perform on April 13 and 20, organizers revealed this week.
He will perform alongside a long list of artists including Lana Del Ray, Doja Cat, Tyler the Creator, Ice Spice and No Doubt.
Born Marwan Abdelhamid in Jerusalem, the rapper has a personal mission to dismantle old notions people have of Palestine. For the artist, who spent some of his formative years growing up in Gaza, memories of Palestine still bring warm feelings, despite the horrors that led to his family having to leave.
In a previous interview with Arab News, he said: “The actual cultural makeup is my mom is half-French and half-Algerian. My dad is Serbian, half-Palestinian. And they actually both grew up in Algeria. But they decided, in the early 90s, post the Oslo Accords, that Palestine was going to be free.”
“So, they went back — my dad went to live in Gaza in the early 1980s. And my dad actually built a hotel there and that’s where I grew up. I grew up in a hotel built with my father’s architectural brain. And, to me, it was like the best years of my life,” the artist said.
As a musician, Saint Levant said that he wants to walk in the footsteps of Palestinian US intellectual Edward Said to “reclaim the Orientalist fantasies that have dictated the geopolitics of our area for the last three centuries.”
