Gaza Meets Geneva

It all started in February 2009, when Swiss film director Nicolas Wadimoff and journalist Béatrice Guelpa were in Gaza filming the documentary Aisheen-Still Alive in Gaza. Wadimoff and Guelpa met with the band, and started building a friendship that led the movie director to ask DARG Team to sign the documentary’s soundtrack. Aisheen is a must see, and the DARG Team’s music will slap you awake to the horrendous living conditions Palestinians in Gaza are put through, but also to their dignity and resilience.

Upon return in Switzerland, Wadimoff and Guelpa “felt that they had left their friends in jail” and decided to put them in touch with rappers from Geneva and Lausanne, leading to the hip hop project Gaza Meets Geneva. Swiss rappers such as La Gale, Rynox or Poh-Low collaborated with DARG Team to record an album, using every technological means at hand to realise this rather uneasy long distance exercise.

However, concerts had to be postponed, or organised via the Web because of the blockade preventing the musicians to move freely. No matter how many diplomatic efforts were deployed by the City of Geneva’s officials, it took almost a year to be able to grant DARG Team the necessary papers and authorisations.

And suddenly, on Sunday 20^th of June 2010, there they were, in Parc de Bastions, so happy to finally be able to reach a wider audience, so enthusiastic !