Saturday, August 12, 2006

What do an Ethiopian, Arab, IDF soldier, Yid and a suicide bomber have in common..

I'm not quite sure but they all appear in the above Hadag Nachash video above. The above video is one of the group's most famous hits, "שירת הסטיקר" ("The Sticker Song" in English). The lines of the song are all slogans seen on Israeli bumper stickers (watch till the end of the video). The opposing political slogans are juxtaposed to create an angry and ironic portrait of political life in Israel.

Hadag Nachash
are known for the leftist political statements they make in many of their songs. They have seven members; their lead rapper and founder is Shaanan Streett.

The group's name literally means "The Snake Fish" ("Ha" meaning "the", "Dag" meaning "fish", and "Nachash" meaning "snake"). It is also, however, a Hebrew pun. In Israel, people who have only recently gotten their driver's licences place a tag on their back window with the words "Nahag Chadash" Hebrew: נהג חדש ("new driver"). The anagram "HaDag Nachash" therefore indicates the group's ambitions: a voice for the youth in Israel.

The band's icon, depicting a child urinating, comes from the Hebrew idiom, loosely translated as, "how the fish pisses" (מאיפה משתין הדג) meaning something akin to, "How it's done". (As in, "That amateur thinks he can beat me - I'll show him how the fish pisses").

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