Music liberated me.
I have learned to create from a hybridized point of view. It's an asset - something rather liberating.
I have a sense of mission in a way. I've always worked on being free, as a woman and as an artist.
World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.
When I go to Beirut, I don't drive. It's traumatizing to drive there.
I had the urge to face my own limitation, and I needed to be bigger. I needed to be more professional and be in a more competitive environment because I wanted to grow as an artist. That's why I went to Europe.
You do not start by working on society; you start by yourself to be a freer person and a more independent person.
Every time I go to Beirut, I see people and the quality of life going slowly from bad to worse, and from worse to even worse.
Faith is a very intimate process that involves being sincere and truthful to a spiritual presence.
Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say - Kate Bush and Radiohead - and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.
I'm Muslim but not really. My family did not care. And I always managed to skip religion classes when I was living in the Gulf, even when they were obligatory.
I had an Arabic background. but I lived a very scattered childhood. I didn't belong to any one culture, which meant I didn't have musical geographies in my head.
The Arabic world was very interesting in the 1920s to '60s: there was something booming culturally, and I found my culture very desirable when I listened to these songs.
The Arabic music I listen to is extremely edgy. Ironic, sarcastic, sensual, erotic.
If you have a drummer who alternates between fast and slow drumming, it can negatively affect the music.
Women are a minority the same way gay people are.
I've always fought any form of censorship.
As an artist, you need to be true to yourself and free and not put yourself in a box that contradicts with what you feel is needed for a song.
There is something spiritual about art that connects us with ourselves and with others; it's really about coming together and creating bridges.
I am interested in exploring encounters where worlds meet and not where they separate.
