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'From Gaza With Love': Palestinian Saint Levant Rouses Coachella

Saint Levant's performance follows last year's show from Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean who became the first Palestinian to perform at Coachella © VALERIE MACON / AFP
Saint Levant's performance follows last year's show from Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean who became the first Palestinian to perform at Coachella © VALERIE MACON / AFP
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'From Gaza With Love': Palestinian Saint Levant Rouses Coachella

Saint Levant's performance follows last year's show from Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean who became the first Palestinian to perform at Coachella © VALERIE MACON / AFP
Saint Levant's performance follows last year's show from Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean who became the first Palestinian to perform at Coachella © VALERIE MACON / AFP

Saint Levant, the Palestinian-French-Algerian-Serbian rapper who's found viral fame online, made his Coachella debut over the weekend, bringing eminently danceable beats and Palestinian solidarity to the stage.

The 23-year-old played a set scheduled for a time conflicting with the highly anticipated No Doubt reunion but still packed the desert festival's Gobi Tent, where he played both his hits and newer work to a sea of fans, many sporting keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags.

"There's so many people we wanted to see at the same time -- but this was a hundred percent where we were coming," Mustafa Arch, a 32-year-old Syrian-Lebanese festival-goer, told AFP after the set.

"Free Palestine -- we're so happy to be here, this is probably the best day of the weekend for us. We'll continue to represent the whole weekend," Arch said.

Some 1.5 million people have taken refuge in the southern city of Rafah, according to the United Nations, which says Israel is blocking food aid convoys as a famine looms.

"Coachella, my name is Saint Levant and I was born in Jerusalem and raised in Gaza," the artist told the crowd to cheers. "As I hope all of you are aware, the people of Gaza have been undergoing a brutal, brutal genocide for the past six months. And the people of Palestine have been undergoing a brutal occupation for the past 75 years."

"It's not just me on the stage -- it's the whole Arab world on the stage."

The artist born Marwan Abdelhamid spent many of his childhood years living in the Gaza Strip.

In 2007 he and his family fled to Jordan, where he lived for approximately a decade before moving to California, where he is now based in Los Angeles.

Saint Levant's trilingual rap track "Very Few Friends" went viral after he released it in November 2022, and 2023's "From Gaza With Love" has also found a growing fanbase.

During Saturday's set he performed the new works "Deira" and "5am in Paris;" he released the latter just a few days ago.

"It's about exile," he told his Coachella audience.

"A feeling that us Palestinians know a bit too well."

The artist said he would also soon release a broader project called "Deira," named after a hotel built by his father which was bombed in recent months.

Speaking to AFP after the set, 43-year-old Yara Brenton called it "incredible" to see a fellow Palestinian onstage.

Saint Levant's performance follows last year's show from Elyanna, a Palestinian-Chilean who became the first Palestinian to perform at Coachella.

"I remember coming to Coachella ages ago, there was nothing like this. I never saw myself represented in anything popular," said Brenton. "It means a lot, and it means a lot to see so many younger people enthusiastic about it too."

She voiced praise that Saint Levant was outspoken about the Palestinian cause onstage, saying that "a few years ago, this wouldn't have been okay."

"There are a lot more people who know about Palestine" today, Brenton said.

"And there's no going back, I think, from this awareness."

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Varieties

Wuhan Keen to Shake off Pandemic Label Five Years On

A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
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Wuhan Keen to Shake off Pandemic Label Five Years On

A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)
A man wearing a face mask looks over a barricade set up to keep people out of a residential compound in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on April 14, 2020. (AFP)

Built in just days as Covid-19 cases spiked in Wuhan in early 2020, the Huoshenshan Hospital was once celebrated as a symbol of the Chinese city's fight against the virus that first emerged there.

The hospital now stands empty, hidden behind more recently built walls -- faded like most traces of the pandemic as locals move on and officials discourage discussion of it.

On January 23, 2020, with the then-unknown virus spreading, Wuhan sealed itself off for 76 days, ushering in China's zero-Covid era of strict travel and health controls and foreshadowing the global disruption yet to come.

Today, the city's bustling shopping districts and gridlocked traffic are a far cry from the empty streets and crammed emergency rooms that marked the world's first Covid lockdown.

"People are moving forward, these memories are getting fuzzier and fuzzier," Jack He, a 20-year-old university student and Wuhan local, told AFP.

He was in high school when the lockdown was imposed, and he spent much of his sophomore year taking online classes from home.

"We still feel like those few years were especially tough... but a new life has started," He said.

- Official silence -

At the former site of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where scientists believe the virus may have crossed over from animals to humans, a light blue wall has been built to shield the market's closed-down stalls from view.

When AFP visited, workers were putting up Chinese New Year decorations on the windows of the market's second floor, where a warren of opticians' shops still operates.

There is nothing to mark the location's significance -- in fact, there are no major memorials to the lives lost to the virus anywhere in the city.

Official commemorations of Wuhan's lockdown ordeal focus on the heroism of doctors and the efficiency with which the city responded to the outbreak, despite international criticism of the local government's censorship of early cases in December 2019.

The market's old produce stalls have been moved to a new development outside the city center, where it was clear that the city was still on edge about its reputation as the cradle of the pandemic.

Over a dozen vendors at the aptly named New Huanan Seafood Market refused to speak about the market's past.

The owner of one stall told AFP on condition of anonymity that "business here is not what it was before".

Another worker said the market's managers had sent security camera footage of AFP journalists out to a mass WeChat group of stall owners and warned them against speaking to the reporters.

- 'City of heroes'-

One of the few remaining public commemorations of the lockdown is next door to the abandoned Huoshenshan hospital -- an unassuming petrol station that doubles as an "anti-Covid-19 pandemic educational base".

One wall of the station was dedicated to a timeline of the lockdown, complete with photographs of President Xi Jinping visiting Wuhan in March 2020.

An employee told AFP that a small building behind the facility's convenience store housed another exhibit, but it was only open "when leaders come to visit".

But days before the fifth anniversary of the lockdown, those memories seemed far away, the city now a hive of activity.

Locals thronged the Shanhaiguan Road breakfast market, munching on bowls of noodles and deep-fried pastries.

In the upmarket Chuhe Hanjie shopping street, people walked dogs and promenaded in designer outfits while others queued to pick up bubble tea orders.

Chen Ziyi, a 40-year-old Wuhan local, said she believed the city's increased prominence has actually had a positive impact, with more tourists visiting.

"Now everyone pays more attention to Wuhan," she said. "They say Wuhan is the city of heroes."