“I think I started singing when I was 8 years old,” she says in a Zoom call from her New York home. EMEL makes her Cleveland debut when she performs at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 21, at Cleveland Museum of Art. “I developed a passion for really singing and being a singer when I was 15. Joan Baez made me conscious about the power of having a voice that goes beyond singing and involves using your voice to move people and change.”
EMEL’s debut album came out in 2012; given her eclectic approach, it wasn’t easy finding a producer willing to take on someone who draws from world music, trip-hop (she cites Massive Attack as an influence) and folk.
“I recorded a bunch of things leading to that first album. It was hard to find the right structure because of the unusual mix of what I was doing,” she says. “It was political and also interesting production and an eclectic mix of different influences. People always had a different idea of what I should be doing with my voice and my song. I was never exactly where I was expected to be.”
She was as surprised as anyone when her protest song “Kelmti Horra” (“My Word is Free”) became an anthem for the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring in 2012.
“It’s not a song to sing along to,” she says. “It’s not molded as a pop song; it’s a very heartfelt song. In my ears, it always sounded like something to bring the crowds together even before I sang it to anyone. I always heard it with a big choir and orchestra. It had an uplifting side to it. I felt really proud because we don’t have a tradition in the Arab region where songs accompany social change. To me, it gives me hope that when we do something with a lot of heart and depth, it always translates and touches anybody.”
For 2019’s Everywhere We Looked Was Burning, her first English language album, she drew inspiration from American poets like T.S. Eliot and John Ashbury.
“I’ve always been very moved by poetry,” she says. “The only thing that gives meaning to anything we’re doing is poetry in words or thoughts or rhythms. I really felt drawn to John Ashbury. I was also reading Rilke at the same time. I found the books in a house I was renting in upstate New York. I loved the imagery. The poetry that I really like has many strong images and references to nature and emotions. I feel like it’s so powerful when someone’s poetry leads your imagination. My vocabulary was so enriched.”
With her new album, MRA, EMEL set out to “challenge” her record label, as she puts it. She hired a female producer and female musicians to back her up.
“Being a revolutionary and rebel, I have been putting albums out for ten years,” she says. “I was working 99 percent of the time with guys. I thought I cannot be a feminist and not do something concrete action for other females. In the music industry, the statistics speak to themselves. We are underrepresented. I thought the problem is that we women do not make other women participate. Men hire men, and women hire men. There is always this cycle. To break the cycle, I thought I had to share my platform with other women. I wanted to explore what a sorority means.”
She also amplifies everything on the LP. The percussion is heavier and her vocals more impactful. A live version of “Massive Will” recorded at Le Centquatre in Paris bristles with cooing backing vocals, snappy percussion and Bjork-like vocals. It represents the visceral nature of her live show.
“The live show is very dynamic,” she says. “It’s very tribal. We have a lot of percussion going on. It’s very rhythm-oriented. We have video installations for each song. We’re trying to depict something really artsy and abstract but also convey the different messages of the song to all the different communities that are underrepresented in society.”
“Lose My Mind,” an album highlight, seamlessly incorporates hip-hop and features rapid-fire vocals from Arabic rapper Nayomi.
“She’s fantastic,” EMEL says of Nayomi. “I always loved hip-hop but never experimented with it. It’s so close to people in general and to me. I wanted to experiment with rappers who rap in Arabic and Persian. It was so interesting to explore different rap languages. Female rappers are underrepresented. I need to have a rapper rapping in Arabic. I was singing in English. People expect me to sing in Arabic, but I wanted to mix it up and sing in English and have her sing in Arabic to surprise people.”
Many of EMEL’s songs are directed at the Arab world. So how does her music speak to the repression happening both there and here in the U.S.?
“I like experimenting with rhythms and music and production, but the core is that it’s very revolutionary,” she says. The beats are revolutionary. We are in a protest somehow. The way I see people react at the shows and their reactions and testimonies make me satisfied. I’m not mainstream or rich, but it’s important what I’m doing. We need to create that collective awareness and collective power to push back and push for all the rights we should have.”
EMEL, 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 21, Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350. Tickets: $25-$45, clevelandart.org.
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This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 12, 2025.
