Diera is a lyrical construct paying homage to a Gazan architectural marvel
Twenty-three year old Palestinian-American singer/rapper/songwriter Saint Levant has teamed up with fifteen year old Palestinian rapper, MC Abdul, on their new 2024 song “Deira” - a stirring tribute to Palestinian culture, specifically that of Gazan Palestinians. The story here really is about Saint Levant and his connection to Gaza, as the song’s name in reference to Deira Hotel - his father’s architectural legacy on the Gazan beachfront, which also served as Levant’s family home. Levant, whose real name is Marwan Abdelhamed, is a multilingual artist, who is of French-Algerian (maternal) and Palestinian-Serbian (paternal) heritage, was born in Jerusalem in 2000.
“Deira is the name of the hotel that my father Rashid, an architect, built with my mother in 2000 when they moved to Gaza. He built this hotel with mud because it was impossible to import cement at the time. ”
However, for reasons to me that are still a bit murky, something having to do with the second intifada around the time of his birth, Levant grew up in the Gaza strip before the family migrated to Jordan in 2007. The fusion of Levant’s ethnic intersectionality is beautifully fused in “Diera”. Traditional Algerian Shaabi music is the rhythmic beat of the song while the music video highlights Gazan Palestinian “daily life, fashion, sports through a dreamy and nostalgic lens.”
Levant further explains in his own words that, “Deira is the name of the hotel that my father Rashid, an architect, built with my mother in 2000 when they moved to Gaza. He built this hotel with mud because it was impossible to import cement at the time. Located on the beach, this hotel was one of the most beautiful in Gaza, made up of 22 rooms. It was a true architectural marvel. On July 16, 2014, four children playing ball out front of the hotel were killed by Israeli rocket fire and most recently the hotel was totally destroyed by bombing three months ago.”
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed four innocent Palestinian children playing on the Gaza beach.
The Diera Hotel, 2014
Both now based in the United States (and both who had escaped Gaza just days before the brutal Israeli onslaught) Saint Levant and MC Abdul both express a sense of longing for Palestine. The song and their music in general is serving as a form of therapy, activism and resilience. I thank both MC Adbul and Saint Levant for artistically giving us all an outlet to express and feel our Palestinian connection.