Tamer Nafar

Tamer Nafar plays The Water Works on Saturday, October 10, as part of the Houston Palestinian Festival 2026. He's a Palestinian rapper, actor, screenwriter, and social activist who grew up in Lyd, a mixed Palestinian-Jewish city near Tel Aviv. He holds the title of the world's first Palestinian rapper, and in 2000 he formed DAM, the first Palestinian hip-hop group, with his brother Suhell Nafar and Mahmood Jrere. Their single "Min Irhabi" ("Who's the Terrorist?") was downloaded over a million times.

Nafar's work reaches well beyond music. He wrote and starred in the award-winning film Junction 48 and played the lead in the theater production How to Make a Revolution. In 2022, he played Khaled in the comedy Hummos Full Trailer, one of the most successful Israeli theater films of that year. Since 2023, he's written weekly opinion columns for Haaretz, +972 Magazine, Germany's Telepolis, and occasionally The Guardian.

There's new material on the horizon, too. He's set to release his first English-language EP, In the Name of the Father, the Imam & John Lennon, and is working on two novels due in 2026-2027. The Houston show is part of the Houston Palestinian Festival 2026, which runs Saturday, October 10 through Sunday, October 11 at The Water Works in Buffalo Bayou Park.