Everybody knows Saint Levant. But have you met Marwan?

One night in August 2022, while Marwan was staying in London for the month, I dragged him with me to see the Ethiopian jazz legend Mulatu Astatke perform at KOKO’s newly furnished venue. During the performance, he turned towards me and said, “I’ll play here one day.” Surely enough, eight months later, he did.

Two years have passed, and Marwan is wrapping up his Deira world tour, joining me from an airport hotel in Berlin, exhausted. It’s been a hectic year. From playing Coachella in April to releasing his album a little while before, working on a new EP, travelling the world, and recording. We’re speaking over the phone, looking back at how rapidly everything has changed; it’s surreal that we’re here.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 00 | Order Here

 It wasn’t long ago that we were in university, wondering where we’d end up. I was more ambivalent about my future, caught up in the insecure uncertainty of my early 20s, but, as cliche as it may sound, Marwan has always known he’d do something, be something. I don’t mean with the sort of narcissistic gravitas you imagine the main character of a mediocre film plot would have. But more from an assertive self-belief and, perhaps from, an equally intense self-awareness that Marwan admits, motivating him to always strive for something with matter. For Marwan, and I share this too (along with many others): few things are scarier than being nothing at all. 

Although he may be known first and foremost as the rapper Saint Levant, introduced to the world with his viral single Very Few Friends, his alter-ego’s ‘lover-boi’ veneer is quickly shedding. Inaugurated by his latest watershed album, Deira, his refined sound is now ushering in a more community-driven and collectively conscious (that’s really always been there), Marwan. “I think honestly, without going too deep into it, I did From Gaza, With Love the EP, and it was very much focused on the self and individual relationships of love and experiences that I had had,” he says.

 His latest album was a love letter to Palestine and Algeria’s musical and cultural history, drenched in Chaabi influences, “With Deira, I wanted to explore, first of all, my North African roots, which my producer, Khalil, was a big part of. By diving into this musical world, I drew much inspiration from these artists, like Dahmane El Harrachi. And I saw that their songs could represent a collective approach to love…In this next era, there will be a lot more of that, but I think better music, more cohesive creative direction and even more of an emphasis on love in a time where they want you to believe we don’t deserve it.” Excavating love further, his newest single, Dalouna, unfolds in a celebration of it.

All that said, I personally don’t know how to write this and call him Saint Levant. His name is Marwan. This is how I know him: He owns a large collection of jumpers from Souk el Joum3a in Amman and used to carry his recording equipment in a beaten-up Odd Future backpack with pink doughnuts on it. He collects vintage Arabic magazines and supports Liverpool. He’s a workaholic. If he knows how to do anything, it’s to make an immaculate schedule that starts with a walk around the block with a coffee, followed by a journal session at 9am on a balcony or ‘balkoneh’ listening to Eddie Kendricks, Meriem Hassan and Luiz Bonfá. And, although by trade he is, first and foremost, a musician, before that, he hoped to work in some sphere of politics or be a start-up founder; music was more of a side project. 

Now, he’s somehow an inverted mixture of them all – effervescently resolute in his political stances, whether on Pan-Arabism or decolonisation; meanwhile, his success has still made him a founder. Building in some way on his previous start-up idea of nurturing the Palestinian tech ecosystem that he worked on at 20, he’s instead nurturing the creative talent in Palestine with his foundation, 2048–which he began in his dorm room around two years ago. “The foundation is focused specifically on creatives and putting money in creative pockets to help them. I think the music just helped me, because it gave me a platform,” he explains. “Our whole mission is about bringing Palestinian ideas to life.”

The foundation has around 6 fellows they’ve funded so far, alongside building a studio in Gaza last year, which the young rapper MC Abdul visited while he was still living there. The studio has since been destroyed. Amidst the unfolding genocide, Marwan has been more focused on the foundation, adamant about growing it, and “Trying to take it to the next level and build a physical space in Palestine, get some partners on board to help us grow it, and continue creating a programme that can help them go from A to Z while also building a network.” 

We are beautiful in the way we want to be…On our terms.” 

Marwan Abdelhamid

A common thread in his work, since before he even began music, has always revolved around a commentary of unravelling orientalism; he’s long been citing the likes of  Edward Said, Franz Fanon and Lila Abu-Lughod as his intellectual backbone to “show the beauty of the Arab world and defy this orientalist fantasy they push onto us. We are beautiful in the way we want to be, not in the way they see us or want us to be. On our terms.” 

When it comes to Palestine, he doesn’t fall into the trap of watering down discourse and asserts the right to the Palestinian struggle in all its forms, since that’s what matters now. Regarding his Algerian side, he decries depictions of Algeria, along with all other Arabs, through frames of barbarism and constantly talks about its history and music. Particularly in this next stage of his career that’s undergirded by an appetite for reconnecting with his North African side. A journey he’s channelling through musical experimentation, “I’m exploring rhythms these days, very much inspired from Algeria… I can’t wait to go back to LA just to sit and sit with myself and produce – I’ve been producing, and I’m just trying to make more music. I have a lot, though. Sometimes I’m too hard on myself.” 

Himself aside, others are hard on him too, indeed; Marwan gets a lot of shit. Of course, there’s the attempted McCarythism from those threatened by his existence as a Palestinian and an Arab. As is the norm, he is dehumanised and accused of being a terrorist, anti-Semitic and all the other familiar names in the tired compendium of racist tropes. Most recently, at a show during his tour in Amsterdam where he took a moment to mention the recent attacks on Arabs in the capital during protests incited by Israeli football fans. On the other hand, from his own, who accuse him of not being Palestinian enough or being too Palestinian, too outspoken then not loud enough. Whatever he does – he disappoints someone. But, if we’re constantly making him something he shouldn’t be, surely he always will? It comes down to how much significance we assign to celebrity.

Marwan is a public figure who happens to be Palestinian and cares about that. Still, he shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all of the discourse just because he’s in the limelight, in the diaspora and more accessible or palatable to larger audiences. This problem is twofold: on the one hand, some Western imaginaries tend to favour the softness of art over the real discourse on Palestine and, more broadly, Arab identity. It saves them from the discomfort of facing their ignorance and complicity in perpetuating our systemic dehumanisation. Therefore, art, in this sense, becomes a distracting cushion–especially when we can now no longer tolerate placid and two-faced assertions of support. On the other hand, Arabs who validly levy this criticism then go on to solely project it towards Arab artists, accusing them of conforming to Western ideals of how we should be, pandering to the white gaze because they are now famous and being given attention, is equally a distraction. It causes unnecessary in-group whining at a time when we have no room for fractured solidarity. 

Marwan never intended to become a symbol for Palestine, nor did Bella Hadid, Elyanna, or Nemahsis. Symbols are often spectacles too hollow to represent a whole people, especially their liberation, achieved in troves of different ways but always with the endpoint of regaining the land and self-determination lost. Of having their full dignity and rootedness restored to their rightful place. This is not an abstract thing. Palestine’s liberation is not a metaphor. Ultimately, artists work in metaphor. They’ll never change the world singularly or alone. Still, they can teach life and offer alternatives to being in it, understanding and seeing it. All of which can catalyse a stirring of feeling–a part of the beginning of transformations towards liberatory consciousness. 

Marwan says it better in his own words: “When there’s a whole goal to tell the world that we don’t exist and are not worthy, and we are not humans, that we don’t have emotions and are one dimensional, I think creativity, especially art, is very important. Because it shows the world differently, it’s all about conveying feelings. If I can hit you with a song that makes you feel some type of way, then I think I’ve done my part. It’s just about making people understand.” So that’s what Marwan is doing. He’s not your designated mouthpiece. He’s just another person, fulfilling their duty to do as much for their people as possible in the ways he knows how – whether you like it or not.

Originally published in Dazed MENA Issue 00 | Order Here

Styling assistants JANNIS JELTO WITZEL and NOELLE HAUER, grooming DUSHAN PETROVICH, production VERS, location scout BASHAAR WAHAB, production assistant LINUS KREITLING.