Oh hi! It’s that point in the semester where it seems like there’s soooo much to do, but not enough time to do it, so hopefully I can help distract you from the amount of work momentarily, or give you something to listen to as you become an academic weapon. Before I introduce the artist for this week and the song I chose, I wanted to take a moment to say that music is something that I listen to because I enjoy it. That being said, the songs I chose to write about are ones that I have a personal connection to. Often a memory or an idea I believe is worth highlighting. With that being said I present the artist and song for this volume of On the DL, Saint Levant. 

I discovered Saint Levant last summer through his TikTok before he was gaining the popularity that he now has. He was plugging his song Very Few Friends, which is a banger, but the reason that I was amazed with Saint Levant was the fact that he is trilingual and sings in English, French, and Arabic. Saint Levant or Marwan Abdelhamid was born in Jerusalem during the second Intifada which happened in 2005, where he spent his childhood. He moved to Jordan when war broke out in the Gaza strip. After 10 years, Abdhelhamid moved to California to study International Relations at UCSB. Abdelhamid released his EP “From Gaza, With Love” in March of this year which tells his story from romantic heartbreak to growing up in Gaza. 

I want to focus on the track that the EP is titled after: “From Gaza, With Love”. In this track Saint Levant connects the theme of heartbreak and his personal connection to Gaza into one song. The track starts off with a woman singing traditional arabic scales and instead of having a base drum or snare drum to create the beat, Saint Levant uses the Darbuka which is a traditional drum in the Arab World. The song transports you to the Middle East, the sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea. Saint Levant employs a sound and set of instruments specific to the region that he is from. Once the song begins, Saint Levant starts off with the lover boy lyrics that made him famous on tiktok, but integrates the political message that he is conveying as well. The song serves as a love letter to his love interest, but also to his home and the people of Palestine. In the pre-chorus Abdelhamid sings “she like me ‘cause I came from Gaza with love/(But I’d feel like a tourist if I even went back)/from Gaza with love/(If they had it their way we would never go back)/from Gaza with love, baby” There are a couple things that strike me in those lyrics, the first being his choice of the words lover boy, which is a tad arrogant given the fact that Saint Levant is aware that his love interest likes him because he is from Gaza. But what strikes me the most is the political message that ​​Abdelhamid is conveying. The feeling that he has about wanting to go back home, but feeling like a tourist in the place that he calls home coupled with the feeling of knowing that he might not even be able to go back is heartbreaking. “From Gaza, With Love” as an EP has songs that convey romantic heartbreak, but I would argue that the song From Gaza, With Love has even more heartbreak, but with a different meaning.