Performing alterity: The translocal politics of an urban youth music scene in post-Oslo Palestine

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Apo and the Apostles performing at Borderline Bar, Jerusalem

Project summary

This ethnographic and gender-sensitive research traces the trans local politics of a self-defined “alternative” youth music scene networked across particular, but connected, post-Oslo urban Haifa, Ramallah, and Amman.

Project details

Location: Palestine

Year(s): 2018

Project director(s): Polly Withers

Lead institutions and funding:

  • CBRL

Project description

This ethnographic and gender-sensitive research traces the trans local politics of a self-defined “alternative” youth music scene networked across particular, but connected, post-Oslo urban Haifa, Ramallah, and Amman. Based on thirteen months of fieldwork, it draws on sixty-four interviews, and over one hundred participant observations with young musicians, bands, audience members, producers, party planners, fans, bar and club owners, DJs, beat makers, and emcees; at parties, concerts, gigs, and raves. It comments on the social and political identities such musical cultures perform locally (in Palestine), and non-locally (when musicians are branded to the UK, mainly London).

Project bibliography

Withers, Polly. 2020. Performing alterity: The translocal politics of an urban youth music scene in post-Oslo Palestine. Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant 2018-2019, p 22.

Published:26 November 2021

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