Paris is grey again. School’s back, and everyone’s already swapped their t-shirts for hoodies, shorts for trousers, and sunnies for scarves. From where I’m standing, temperatures have already dropped, signaling that summer is officially over. That’s the setting in which I basically met with Zeid Hamdan, one half of musical duo Bedouin Burger, before walking into Le Chat Noir— a cozy café in the 11th arrondissement that doubles as a magnet for artists, oddballs, and anyone who can’t start the day without a debate over a brew— to seek shelter from the cold.
At the time of our conversation, only a few weeks separated us from the second painful anniversary of the genocide in Gaza. As two Arabs weighed down by the state of the region we both call home, what was meant to be a talk about music quickly turned into a reflection on everything surrounding it: the burden, and sometimes the necessity, of creating art when the world you come from keeps collapsing.
And it didn’t take long for us to cut through the small talk. With that grim anniversary looming, how could it? The introductions dissolved somewhere between two sips of coffee and a passing reflection on the region’s soundscape, when Hamdan looked up and said, “If you’re not hungry for justice, what are you even doing?” That’s when I realized that we were no longer talking as musicians and interviewers, but as two people trying to make sense of a reality none of us fully grasp.
He spoke about how he’s always felt the need to say something, whether it’s on stage or through his music. For him, staying silent feels like a kind of betrayal: towards himself, his craft, and the people he carries with him. And that ethos — of doing good, of staying accountable — doesn’t stop when the show’s over as it bleeds into how he lives, shapes the choices he makes, and defines the man he tries to be when no one’s watching.
“You cannot accept living against yourself. You need justice at all times. When you drink or eat, you need to feel like you’re doing justice to yourself, that every time you buy something, from anywhere, you’re not hurting anyone. You owe that to yourself. And if you don’t have this hygiene, if your mind isn’t clean enough to seek that justice, then you’re a dead soul,” the multi-instrumentalist told MILLE.
That said, the 49-year-old admits that he’s far from living an entirely ethical life, or at least the one he aspires to lead. “I’m still a client of genocidal banks, for example,” he says, “but I’m aware of it and I work hard every day to cut them out, one after another. There are so many brands, so many people I refuse to support anymore.”
This awareness seeps into every detail of his daily life, from the plugins he uses to make music to how he collects his royalties. “I’m still figuring out how to get paid by Spotify without enabling a genocide,” he explains. “I’m trying to find ways to bypass Instagram, Meta, and all these other indirect supporters. And I share this quest with my fans, because we have to free ourselves. I’ll always use every stage, every medium, to repeat it: life, without the pursuit of justice, has no value.
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“But let’s be realistic — it’s not easy,” he says, his tone softening for a moment.“The hardest work isn’t going to demonstrations or posting on Instagram,” he explained. “It’s every time you wake up and decide where your money’s going, what you’re choosing. It starts with us. And if we make just one good choice a day, that’s already huge.”
When asked whether that philosophy has ever cost him — whether he’s had to turn down opportunities or collaborations because of his beliefs — he paused. Then, with a slight shrug, he said, “Honestly, I don’t know if it’s luck, but for the last twenty years, I’ve never been approached by any unethical brand.”
“I’ve never had to collaborate with any tobacco or alcohol brands, or fashion, or whatever,” he reflected. “I think they know me enough by now.” He laughed briefly before adding, “When I was younger, I used to be an ambassador for Red Bull. But with time, we both understood that we’re not aligned”. He also explained that while he entertained close friendships with some of the individuals who worked there, a point came when both sides recognized it was time to split paths. “And then we separated,” he simply said, adding that since then, his path has been one of constant pruning, cutting off anything that no longer sits right next to his beliefs. “Every day,” he says, “I go further and further into eliminating what contradicts my values.“
As he puts it, that moral compass guides both his personal life and his work, influencing not only what he creates, and who he is, but also who he chooses to uplift. When talking about how rap has become the go-to outlet for young artists, he explained feeling unbothered by its dominance. What matters, he says, is intention, holding deep respect for those who use hip-hop as a medium to trigger change rather than glorify themselves. To him, it’s proof that music still has the power to provoke, challenge, and move people.
He named a few friends — Bu Nasser, El Ras — with admiration. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I never see them promoting cars and girls. They’re promoting fights and causes. They inspire me. They’re my heroes,” he says. “If that’s the main sound that connects the youth right now, then maybe that’s exactly what we need.”
Hamdan tells me he tries to pass this awareness on to his children — six and 12 years old respectively— teaching them to see the world as it really is, and not as it’s sold to them. “What you’ve been taught about justice isn’t the reality,” he says he tells them, drawing a line for them to follow. “Forget McDonald’s, forget Coca-Cola. Those are the things that made you a refugee.” His lessons are simple but direct and they’ve sunk in. “They’re young,” he says, “and they already know never to buy a Coca-Cola. They look at the logos and feel nothing.”
This is what it means to raise awareness, to open your eyes “like in The Matrix,” as he puts it, to see the machine behind the polished façade of European or American lifestyles. Living within it, he says, means committing to a kind of everyday resistance. “Every time you reach for your wallet, it matters,” he says. “Who are you feeding: the monster, or what stands against it?” For him, every purchase, every brand, every device is an ethical decision. “It’s like a diet: you decide whether to feed yourself carbs or protein. The same goes for your soul.”
“We’re all living inside the stomach of the monster,” he says, referring to the Western systems that shape and sustain daily life, even for those resisting them. The hardest part, he adds, is learning to live with contradiction, to survive within those systems without surrendering to them. “It’s hard to accept that we’ll have to live this way until we die,” he says, “in a form of everyday resistance.”
Still, he remains hopeful.
“You can live inside it, but you don’t have to belong to it,” he concluded.
On October 23, Hamdan will make his Parisian debut at La Flèche d’Or, marking the release of his next project — a live performance piece titled after himself. Buy your tickets online here.
The post Zeid Hamdan on Music, Morality, and Living in the Belly of the Beast appeared first on MILLE WORLD.
