Resident raises his voice for Palestine

Culture. “Under the rubble”: Resident raises his voice for Palestine

March 1, 2024.

The author showed his social and human commitment towards the residents of Gaza in his most recent album.

The smile of the Puerto Rican singer Residente, René Pérez, is sad, small, tired. It has been since he spoke about Palestine and cried. You have to listen to Beneath the Rubble, one of the singles from his latest album, to understand it. Listening to it and seeing the pain of so many people...

The author is considered the best rapper in Spanish history, according to the music magazine Billboard, and he began his new text with a social and human commitment to the residents of Gaza:

“I don't think the lineage is blocked

They are the sons of the sons of the sons of the sons

With stick and stone against the tanks

Nobody moves us from here.”

From then on, he described people without a visa, raised “differently”, playing football barefoot on the cement in this caged place, but caged by who, who has the right to cage?

In front of them, he denounced the one who shot from afar, the one who activated the red button on the bombs without daring to look them in the eye, referring to Zionism as an invader.

But this would only be the Spanish part. Then would come the fragment performed by local artist Amal Murkus and she would talk about houses turned into stones and uncontrollable crying:

“My people, do not despair, your voice is strong

Oh country, do not cry, your tears are precious.

Oh Gaza, oh dear, oh daughter of the waves.”

During the last Latin Grammy Awards in Seville last November, Residente regretted that no one mentioned the humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

A few days later, he denounced on his social networks the “genocidal bombings” of “Tel Aviv” and publicly apologized for a verse of the song Atrévete-Te-Te that judged those born in the Levantine territory.

The artist was part of Calle 13, the rap and folklore duo that launched a renewed social criticism in Latin American songs based on the postulates of hip hop and traditional sounds.

Then, alone, he did not remain silent and did not stop confronting the colonial situation of Puerto Rico and the management of its governors.

Five years ago he led a protest against the authorities of his nation after the passage of Hurricane María, which caused more than three thousand deaths, in part due to the irresponsibility of the State.

There is the art of René Pérez, in the signs of nonconformity, in his transmission of images so atrocious that they would like to be assumed to be fictitious. But no, they are very real, although incomprehensible and inadmissible, real in their entirety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MCxfclUxlQ