The Palestinian hip-hop group transformed Lee’s Palace into a living, breathing reminder of music’s power to connect across borders
Under a wash of purple and green light, DAM turned Lee’s Palace into a pulse of protest and pride. Their set carries the spirit of home through every verse.
By T Edward
On Sept. 26, the crowd at Lee’s Palace didn’t just arrive, they gathered. Friends embraced and shared snacks at the bar as a low hum of Arabic and Toronto-slang filled the air. The Toronto Palestine Film Festival had already hosted film screenings, panels and pop-ups all week, but this night felt like its heartbeat.
Opening act Zico, a Cairo-born rapper and spoken word artist, set the tone with verses of poems that felt half confession, half incantation. His verses moved like smoke, looping through memories of home and exile while he explored his Egyptian identity and themes of racism and colonization. Zico’s set also featured an oud — a traditional instrument from the SWANA region — that filled the venue with velvety tones perfectly supporting the set. By the time Zico and his instrumentalists reached a close, the crowd was leaning in close, warmed and ready.
Zico opens the night with impactful poetry and oud, filling Lee’s Palace with stories of exile and belonging. His words linger long after the final note fades.
Then came DAM, a four-piece group whose members have been shaping Palestinian hip-hop since the late 1990s. Brothers and founders Tamer Nafar and Suhell Nafar began the project in 1999, later joined by Maysa Daw. In Arabic, “Dam” means “everlasting,” and the name fits. Their sound is elastic and layered, built from sharp Arabic lyricism, Middle Eastern instrumentation and the swagger of classic hip-hop production. The name also means blood in Hebrew and is an acronym for “Da Arabic MCs”, speaking to their multilingual, cross-cultural range.
Onstage, DAM’s chemistry felt lived-in — the kind of connection that comes from countless tours, arguments and shared history. The 30-hour flight the band had taken to reach Toronto earlier that day and similar flights throughout their tour may be an explanation for their closeness. “I grew up listening to their music,” Maysa relayed backstage, emphasizing the lifelong personal connection she feels to DAM’s music and the group’s other members.
Part of the group’s chemistry on stage also comes from their embracing of change throughout the concert, letting each song become fluid and creating a new version in every city. “When you record something, you are stuck to the beat,” Tamer said backstage earlier in the night. “But when you perform it live, the flow changes. You are more confident with the song.” That confidence pulsed through the set at Lee’s Palace, as each song seemed to breathe differently when compared to the studio versions, almost being reshaped by the room itself.
As the night progressed, Maysa’s vocals were the throughline, soaring and grounded all at once. She carried the feminist themes of the band’s later songs with a mix of vulnerability and precision, commanding the room without force. Her voice cut through the heavy bass like sunlight through haze, anchoring the tone of the group. Despite joining DAM 16 years after the band’s inception, her voice seems perfectly suited to the tone of DAM’s discography.
The setlist moved between the group’s early catalogue and newer songs from their 2019 album titled Ben Haana Wa Maana, which spans from danceable crowd favourites to hard-hitting tracks about systemic oppression. The band even surprised the audience with an Arabic children’s song that the crowd sang back at full volume in a rare moment of communal softness inside a monumental venue that once hosted the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana.
This sense of community was reflected by the members of DAM that night. Being banned from performing in Palestine adds a particular ache to their international shows. “It’s emotional and beautiful, but also very sad,” Maysa explained. “We meet more people from Lebanon, from Syria, even from Gaza when we perform abroad. So it’s bittersweet.”
The crowd leans forward, bathed in red light, as DAM’s performance fills the air with warmth and longing.
That feeling hung in the air: a mixture of pride and loss. The audience, heavy with Arabic chatter, met it with warmth. Between songs, Tamer taught short Arabic phrases and shared bits of cultural context, transforming the performance into a small act of community building.
In the interview backstage, Tamer spoke about refusing to be defined solely by politics and how the group’s identity has evolved over time.
“We wanted to be artists,” he said. “Nobody goes in and says the Beatles are the face of Liverpool. But now, when our identity is under attack, art feels privileged,” he said. “So I don’t mind being seen as Palestinian first.”
That mix of exhaustion and resilience echoed throughout every verse. DAM’s music didn’t posture or plead, it simply existed and insisted. Their music made space for humour and reflection, for grief and some intense groove.
By the end of the night, people were pressed shoulder to shoulder, moving as one organism. Outside, the Bloor Street air was sharp with autumn, but inside couldn’t have been more warm and homey.
