Yasmine Hamdan - With Her Heart in Beirut

Yasmine Hamdan is among the most important Lebanese musicians of the last twenty years. She made her debut back in 1999 in the duo Soap Kills alongside her namesake friend Zeid Hamdan, creating a series of albums that were fundamental to the evolution of Arab pop music. The introduction of electronic elements close to trip-hop, combined with an intrinsic bond to Middle Eastern tradition, characterized much of her early career, up until the duo's split and her subsequent experience with the Y.A.S. project alongside French-Afghan producer Mirwais, who had already worked with stars of the caliber of Madonna. In 2013, the singer-songwriter finally decided to go solo, releasing the beautiful debut album "Ya Nass", in collaboration with Marc Collin of the French duo Nouvelle Vague. What brought her recognition in the Old Continent was a cameo in Jim Jarmusch's film "Only Lovers Left Alive", in which Yasmine performs in a club in Tangier the seductive "Hal", featured precisely on her first LP. After touring the world alongside her husband, the acclaimed Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, Yasmine Hamdan has settled down in Paris and recently released her second album, "Al Jamilat". We caught up with her ahead of her upcoming lengthy tour, to hear a bit about her long history and her projects.

Four years have passed since your last album, "Ya Nass". How have you spent this time, and how much, and in what ways, do you feel you've changed?

I'm always very busy with music, promoting the album, the long tour, and lots of other projects that constantly grab my attention. I hardly notice the years going by. It could be two, three, four years. My mind doesn't dwell on that much. I'm continually surprised by how life and things evolve. I've walked, traveled, worked a lot; right now I'm very busy promoting "Al Jamilat" and I really have little time to work. When I need to compose music, I need to relax, and a lot of solitude. I started working on this new album in 2015. And it's been two years spent in a constant search for new songs, new things to explore. I could have released it last year because it was already ready in September, but I needed more time to fine-tune it, perfect it, and put it all together. So it came out in 2017. In making this record I was hugely influenced by the experience gained on the previous tour, having played and collaborated with so many musicians. Everything is much more precise, more accurate. And that's what I was looking for in this new adventure.

Your music is a mix of Arab tradition and modern sounds. For instance, on "Al Jamilat" we find tracks like "Choubi" and "Ta3ala" where I really sense this fusion. How did these two songs come about?

I'm very influenced by Arabic music, and by electronic music in general; when I started working on this record, I did some deep research. For "Choubi," for example, I let this groove that I had in my head settle, inspired by sounds and trends typical of the Eighties, and it's one of the few songs I reworked several times in the studio with the band. There were a lot of transformations before we got to the final version. "Ta3Ala," on the other hand, has a Kuwaiti groove. I love Kuwaiti music and I lived in Kuwait for a while. Then I asked a Mexican composer friend of mine for his opinion, and he helped me put it all together and make it modern. So I started working around the groove that had taken shape, enriching it with folkloric elements, blending them in turn into a new setting.

Luke Smith, Leo Abrahams, Shahzad Ismaily, Steve Shelley: important names who contributed to "Al Jamilat." Can you tell us about your relationship with them and how they contributed to the record?

Every musician who worked on this record is an integral part of the context, of the process. I was lucky enough to have some really substantial musicians by my side, each one with a strong personality. I had eleven demos, to which I then added new elements one at a time, and each of them gave me valuable material in some way, ideas that I then worked into the album, which I actually recorded for the first time in New York; then I went back to Paris and started reworking the various parts with all this new material in my hands to work with. Every musician mattered, each with their own particular quality, their own distinctive mark. They all reinterpreted the music I brought them in wonderful ways.

What do you still carry with you from your musical and artistic experience with Zeid Hamdan and Mirwais?

I'm a lucky person. In every project I've worked on, I've always worked with fantastic people. Soap Kills was the start of this whole adventure. That's where I realized I wanted to make music. It was a revelation, the thing that opened my heart and mind to music. With Mirwais, on the other hand, it was completely different, because I came from a more underground background, while he'd worked with famous musicians of the caliber of Madonna. Sure, he's an exceptional producer, close to the world of major labels, to electro-pop, and he helped loosen me up, helped bring out who I really am, what I really want. And so today I've ended up at Crammed, an independent label that pays close attention to all kinds of sounds from around the world, and it felt like coming home, and that's really important because it helps me grow as an artist and at the same time helps my project grow too. That's been the case since "Ya Nass" onward, and the experience with Jarmusch was also wonderful and important. Whereas with "Al Jamilat" I refined my research even further, making it more complete, drawing on the many trips I've taken over these years, bringing a range of musicians into the project. Usually I don't have anything set in stone going in. I simply let myself be carried along by the feelings I'm experiencing at a given moment, and I let them lead me toward new territory. And that's basically what happened with "Al Jamilat."

Al Jamilat is built around a poem by the poet Mahmoud Darwich. Can you tell us about this particular inspiration?

It's a beautiful poem, full of metaphors. It's a celebration of femininity, of beauty, but also of its imperfection. What I wanted to do with this record was also to celebrate femininity, the strength of women. And I feel really proud of that. We live in a difficult world, one that desperately needs women, in every area of life. Basically, I wanted to pay tribute to what women do, to their strength. That's something I wanted to do. And now I've finally done it.

In your life you've traveled through countless cities, seen and gotten to know different peoples and places. You've had the chance to interact with different cultures. Looking at what's happening in the world today, with the tragedy of wars and refugees fleeing, it seems like European countries have lost their conscience. All that keeps growing is contamination from the web, through social media, made up of fiction and illusion. What do you think about this situation?

I think this is a global situation, not just a European one. I often think we're all living as if inside a ping pong ball. The issue, for me, is that we live in an extremely stressful world, where everything is pushed to excess: too much consumerism, too much competition, people live only to earn more and more and consume more and more. There's no time left to reflect on reality. There's no more stillness. We should be rising up to more existential and philosophical levels, rather than staying only on economic and political ones. Lately, too, people let themselves get swept up too quickly by the sheer amount of information coming at them, and that feeds populist rhetoric. There are a lot of political leaders who exploit tension between peoples, fear, discord between different groups. And that's the trend today. And I'm sick of it. I wish people were more aware of what's really happening and would start pushing back against this drift.

You're an actress, your husband is a great director, you've worked with Jarmusch. What's your relationship with acting? When did that passion start?

I don't think of myself as an actress. I'm more of a composer, a musician and a singer. I've collaborated a lot in film and theater, but only on the musical side. I have made some small appearances, sure. And I've had the privilege of appearing several times in some films, but my real inclination lies elsewhere, even though in music videos I try not to let the camera influence me too much. Acting is very difficult and it's something that doesn't really come naturally to me. In music it's different. Even as I range across different styles, I always stay myself.

Have you ever been to Italy? What do you think of this country? What connection do you have with it?

I love Italy, although I haven't managed to perform in your country yet. I think it's one of the most beautiful nations there is. It's a country full of wonderful landscapes, extremely sophisticated but at the same time very open to other cultures, a fascinating, warm place. I love Italian food, even though I always have to be very careful about gluten. And for me that's really a big problem, a real drama. I love Italian cinema a lot, I have a lot of Italian friends and it's always a pleasure to run into them here in Paris too.

How would you describe Lebanon today, and what do you dream of for your country? How much do you miss Beirut?

Of course I miss Beirut. I go back often. My family is there, my friends. It's the place I carry in my heart wherever I go. I'm always really happy to go back and see my relatives, my old friends again. There you can meet the most genuine people. There's a fantastic atmosphere, wonderful food. Even though every time I find quite a few problems, quite a few social dysfunctions, and I'm very angry about the political situation and the way corruption has taken root in society. There are too many parties involved and too much division. And I hope people start refusing to accept all this any longer. For me it's always extremely difficult to talk about my homeland and the problems gripping it. My life is there, my family. And there's a very dangerous, precarious balance that always worries me a great deal.

In an interview for Musique you described yourself as a woman who knows where she wants to go, while still leaving room for the unexpected. It makes me wonder: what should we expect from Yasmine Hamdan in the future? And what does Yasmine expect from the future?

It's not so much about what I want, but what I expect. There's a substantial difference between what you expect and what you want, what you hope for. I hope my music keeps reaching more and more people, because I believe music can overcome barriers, distances. Music is that place where people can communicate and meet. I hate barriers. And I will always fight to be free to express myself without any chains. And I will always fight to sing in Arabic. Language isn't a barrier, but a tool for communicating emotions and a particular artistic vision. Interacting with so many different people, opening up to so many other worlds, can only enrich us. What I'd like to do is keep bringing new projects to life. I love what I do also because it lets me travel a lot, and as a result, cross-pollinate with the world. Interacting is important. Cultural cross-pollination is something wonderful.

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