Rasha Nahas on her first music album
Palestinian singer-songwriter Rasha Nahas is set to release her debut album early next year. She talks to Emirates Woman about music, performance and theatricality
The thing that drives me as a songwriter is my emotions and thoughts,” says Palestinian singer-songwriter Rasha Nahas. “I’m a sensitive person and I feel that with music I digest and reflect what I’m going through.” Nahas, who has performed extensively across Europe, is a young musician to watch. A performance artist as well as a talented guitarist, her music blends classic rock, punk, folk and cabaret, with the ‘reckless echoes’ of free jazz thrown in for good measure. Now she is preparing to release her debut album, with singles and music videos being prepped for launch early next year.
“The main colour is rock,” says Nahas of her upcoming album, which has been largely financed via a crowdfunding campaign. “In addition, there is a lot of theatricality in the singing as well as in the songwriting. The album is also very personal and intimate and I think that this blurring between the theatricality and the more personal material is what’s interesting for me.” Currently living and working in Berlin, Nahas grew up in Haifa, the epicentre of the Palestinian underground music scene within the Green Line. The Guardian once described her as having “the theatricality of Weimar cabaret with added violins and rockabilly”, and her sound is sometimes grungy and intense. An intensity that has only been accentuated by her move to Berlin.
“The move from Haifa to Berlin was very beautiful and strengthening, and of course difficult, as any relocation or immigration process is,” she says. “It definitely gave me a lot as an artist. I feel that Berlin gives me a lot of space to experiment and to redefine what I think my music is.”
Is the Palestinian struggle part of that redefinition?
“I wouldn’t say a part, but a layer,” she replies. “It’s a layer of my work as much as it’s a layer of my life and my identity, and this is reflected in my songwriting.” Nahas has previously stated that she cannot call for the rights of Palestinians without also speaking up for the rights of others. “I feel it is the same fight,” she said. “The same bug in the head, the same machine that we’re fighting.”
“I believe that activism is one, and if you are aware [enough] to care about a struggle then I believe it’s weird if you’re not sensitive about another struggle,” she says. “I feel that it comes from the same place in the heart. Like, it’s weird for me if you’re a feminist and [yet] you’re racist towards me as an Arab.” Although her solo career has taken up the majority of her time, during the past year Nahas has also “been juggling between different projects that I love.” One is Kallemi, a fusion project of ‘deep buttery beats with West African percussions dipped in distorted unapologetic guitars’. Another is a theatre project in Hamburg. Kallemi’s four band members were originally assembled for a one-off performance at Kaserne Global in 2018 but have continued to perform together, despite living in different countries. As well as Nahas, the band includes the Palestinian singer-songwriter Maysa Daw, who is now part of the hip-hop group DAM, Baselbased Jasmin Albash, and the Dominican rapper La Nefera.
“For the first part of the project we had five days in Ramallah where we rented an apartment and brought every instrument we had,” remembers Daw of Kallemi’s first jam together. “And it just magically happened. Someone would start playing something and the rest of us would join in. We would also switch instruments sometimes and try playing instruments we’re not so strong with.
“I ended up playing percussions for the first time in my life. I actually discovered that I can drum and sing at the same time. Jasmin filled up the bass with synths and keyboards and brought her sounds into it. In breaks, Rasha would play with Jasmin’s loops and synths and used sounds that Jasmin never used before, and that as well was put into the music. It opened a new door. We all went out of our comfort zone yet somehow it was very comfortable. I think what made us click and connect so much is how different, yet how similar, we all are. Musically, and on a personal level as well.”Kallemi is very special to Nahas. A handful of shows are being scheduled for the coming months and she has also recently performed, either solo or with her band, in Morocco, Switzerland, Germany and Palestine.
“I just really enjoy music with a twist and I love to play with lyrics and have fun with how they can sound,” she says. “More than that, I really love performing and having fun on stage, and usually when I’m writing a song I feel that the vision and feeling of the performance becomes part of the songwriting process.”