COLORSxSTUDIOS

What is your first musical memory?

I grew up in Cairo in a building together with my family and extended family. I guess my first musical memory is singing on the staircase with my sisters and cousins. I also remember my father buying lots of different kinds of tapes and CDs and listening to them together on Friday mornings.

Tell us more about Cairo…

Cairo’s big, loud, and intense. It’s influenced me in every way possible. It’s super lively. From a young age I got used to the noise, and from that I got into very loud music. I think I just needed something that was louder than the city, you know?

Which artists particularly inspired you when you were growing up? 

I listened to a lot of different kinds of pop music that came out in the early 2000s. There were many different singers at that time, like Sherene and Elisa. I also strongly remember listening to these special compilation tapes that music shops put together and released over the summer months. They featured a wide range of singers from all over the Arab world, both old and new. They brought together so many different eras in a kind of insane mixtape situation.

When did you first start making music yourself? When did you realize you wanted to pursue it professionally?

The first pieces of music that I wrote and shared with others were heavily influenced by punk and metal. When I was 17, I was in a band that used to play super DIY shows. After that, my friend Mohamed Shafik and I started a duo called Shorba. We released some tracks online that got a really big following. Recently, one of them, ‘Shorbet Rosas’, was used for the soundtrack of the Netflix series ‘AlRawabi School for Girls’.

At that time, it was common for women to be singers, but not producers. I really wanted to be able to do both, so I decided to learn how to use music softwares. This came in handy when I made my debut album, ‘Ahwar’. It took quite a bit of time to finish, because I was figuring everything out as I went along. When I released it in November 2017, that was when I decided I could pursue music professionally. I was signed by DISK agency in Berlin, which enabled me to start touring with my album.

As well as your band and duo, you also sang in choirs before you pursued a career as a solo artist. What do you enjoy about collective experiences of music? 

To me, music is always a collective experience. Even ‘Ahwar’, which I released as a solo artist, was recorded in collaboration with 18 other musicians. I think it’s really important to sing, or play an instrument alone without additional accompaniment sometimes—that’s how you learn about yourself, your songs, and get more comfortable in the way you articulate things. At the same time, playing with other people really pushes you in all kinds of ways. It’s like you’re dancing together. Sometimes you can end up doing things that you didn’t think you could do.

My songs are constructed using a lot of improvisation. They feature a lot of “open” sections that are created in the moment. For ‘Ahwar’, I worked with the harpist Sarah Pagé and the double bassist Jonah Fortune. When we recorded together, it felt like we were each driving our own cars and not waiting for the traffic lights. We were just exploring ourselves, and trusting that we could hear what the others were playing without having to study or analyze it.

Speaking of dreams, your music has been described as “haunting”…

‘Ahwar’ features a few songs that aren’t tied to clear beats or rhythms. They’re more about the ways different instruments and voices interact. I was very interested in the idea of daydreaming, and the musicians’ minds traveling as they were playing. As a result, there’re a lot of moments where instruments drift off. Maybe the listeners drift off while they’re listening to the music as well? Maybe they find themselves leaving the space that they are in? This could be the reason that it’s described as haunting.

You also compose music for film. How does this differ from composing for yourself?

I was approached by the Moroccan-British director Fyzal Boulifa, who was inspired by ‘Ahwar’ and wanted me to compose the soundtrack for his new film ‘The Damned Don’t Cry’ (2022). It was the first time I’d ever composed music for a long feature. I really enjoyed the process, and working with Fyzal. It was very different to what I’m used to: in film, you are inspired by the characters, images, and the director’s narrative rather than relying solely on your internal thoughts and fantasies. The soundtrack I created won a couple of awards, which was mind blowing for me!