Kokym laughs the way someone does when he’s been misunderstood for too long; not bitterly, but with irony. “People expect Palestinians to be either fighters or victims,” he tells MILLE. “But we’re a diverse population like every other population. We are not two types, and for men we’re not only those composed, stoic figures embodying some stereotype of masculinity. We cry, we laugh, we dance. We’re sarcastic. I want to show that side of us to the world.”
Born Karam Khalaf in the Palestinian village of Jat, near Jenin, Kokym is the world’s only fellahi pop artist, and he wears that title proudly. In a musical landscape often dominated by themes of exile, grief, and resistance, he has carved out a genre that blends electronic pop with the humor, cadence, and dialect of Palestinian farmers. His sound is instantly recognizable: playful yet melancholic, political yet deeply personal.
Fellahi—from fellah, meaning “farmer”—is the rural Palestinian dialect spoken for generations in villages like Jat. For Kokym, it’s not a stylistic decision but a natural continuation of how he speaks every day. “This is how my people talk,” he says. “When I sing in fellahi, I’m not performing authenticity. I’m just being myself.”
He began singing at ten, teaching himself the keyboard at thirteen, and later moved to Istanbul to study Arabic music. There, he learned to play the baglama, oud, ukulele, guitar, and piano, grounding his pop instincts in classical training. “At the beginning, I didn’t even have instruments,” he laughs. “The streets were my studio. I used spoons, bits of wood, car horns—anything that made a sound.”
His first song in the fellahi dialect came in 2017 and immediately changed his direction. “My friends told me, ‘This is the real you,’” he recalls. “They were right. When I sing in fellahi, I sound like myself.” Since then, Kokym has built an entire world around his dialect and humor.
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In his 2023 single 3 Shoroot, he appears as a thobe-wearing astronaut floating in outer space, a surreal image that rewires what a Palestinian man can look like. In Zaffit El Tahrer, written during the Sheikh Jarrah uprising of 2021, he transforms a traditional wedding chant into an anthem of protest. And in Ya Rayheen al-Quds, he reimagines a folkloric classic by weaving in the names of everyday Jerusalem landmarks—Abu Shukri falafel shop, Sutooh al-Khan, Khan al-Zeit market—reminding listeners that the city is not only sacred but lived in, laughed in, and longed for.
What connects these songs isn’t just language but mood. They are joyful, cheeky, and tender, qualities rarely granted to Palestinian men in global culture. “I don’t see myself as having macho masculinity,” he says. “I’m different from what a man is supposed to be. Even when I tried to be serious, it didn’t work. That’s just not me.”
That sense of lightness defines his persona. “I like to make jokes, and to deal with things with sarcasm,” says the self-described “funny Palestinian artist,” adding “It’s how I survive.” Take his song Al Shabb Al-Sayye3 (“The Wasted Guy”) for instance, a tongue-in-cheek response to his uncles, one of whom once tried to sing professionally but never made it. “It was my way of saying: don’t take yourselves too seriously.”
Then came October 2023. When the bombing began, he abandoned a nearly finished album. “All I knew was that I wasn’t sleeping,” he says. “I started recording at home, just me and the piano. It was dystopian.” The result was a six-track mini-album dubbed Bayaan Estinkari that captured the exhaustion and grief of that period. Of all the songs, Hizam Nar and Nam Ya Hob (Gaza Lullaby) stand out as sparse and trembling meditations on trauma without surrendering to it.
Still, he refused to let sadness define his art. “It’s easier to write a sad song,” he admits. “People are used to it. They expect Palestinians to be victims. But people in Gaza messaged me that they loved the happy songs too. Even under bombing, people want to dance.” He pauses, then smiles softly. “Joy is resistance.”
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That conviction carries into his forthcoming album, KOKÉMON, his most personal and sonically daring project yet, centered, somewhat hilariously, on his dating history. “It’s about the people I met inside and outside Palestine, and everything that came with it,” he explains.
He dropped the first single from the upcoming project, Ana Mish Amreek, in Julyi. In the video, he plays a farmer surrounded by outsiders wearing American cowboy costumes trying to reshape him. “They almost succeed,” he laughs, “but in the end I go back to being myself, I take off the fancy clothes and put my cap back on.”
The record tells a metaphorical story about a Palestinian anti-hero: a superhero who returns home to chase his dreams, only to realize that the system is designed to crush them. “In the end, he retreats,” Kokym says quietly. “That’s what it felt like when I came back from Turkey, like there are borders you can’t cross even when you’re home.”
Ana Mish Amreeki was followed by Skoda Koda, a track stitched together from older and newer takes. “Between the first and second single there were three months,” he says. “It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but as a Palestinian artist you’re always waiting. You can’t just drop an album; you have to follow the news and predict what will happen tomorrow. It’s like walking on eggshells. Sometimes you’re playing with fire.”
Even with delays, the response has been overwhelming. From Gaza, fans sent videos of themselves singing along under siege. From abroad, messages poured in celebrating the humor and honesty of his lyrics. “The comments from Gaza mean everything to me,” he says. “They understand me. They get it. People under bombardment still need to laugh, to feel alive.”
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Between Palestine and Berlin, Kokym’s writing shifts tone. “In Palestine, you always feel like you have to talk politics,” he says. “In Berlin, I write about myself, about love, borders, and the feeling that maybe it was wrong to dream beyond Oslo’s limits.” He smiles, half serious. “There, politics still exists, but inside the personal.”
He knows how lonely the road can be. “There isn’t really a music community,” he says. “Most of us are abroad. It’s just me, Manus, and Kheshb.” He has collaborated with Synaptik and Aya Khalaf,, and hopes to work with Tul8te and Rola Azar, artists who, like him, blend nostalgia and experimentation. “The scene is growing,” he says, “but slowly. We need to build something that lasts.”
If his songs sound both local and universal, it’s because Kokym writes from an in-between space — between village and city, past and present, despair and humor. He describes himself as “soft and funny,” a balance he learned from listening to Abdel Halim Hafez with his father. “I love how Abdel Halim sang with warmth, how he expressed emotion without fear.”
The result is music that complicates what it means to be Palestinian, not only for outsiders but for Palestinians themselves. “When you sing about love and dating, people see you as human,” he says. “That’s the point. That’s my mission.” It’s why Al Shabb Al-Sayye3 can coexist with Nam Ya Hob, why satire and sadness belong in the same universe. For Kokym, to humanize is not only to resist stereotypes but to reclaim the full emotional range of life.
He grins when asked whether he feels he’s stepping outside the box. “I’m not trying to get out of the box,” he says. “I was never in the box in the first place. This is who I am. And this is who we are.”
