Loading ...Yasmine Hamdan on the weight of words
Whoops issued from the audience gathered at O1NE House of Entertainment Sunday as Yasmine Hamdan broke into the opening lines of “Beirut,” her interpretation of a satirical song written in the 1940s by Omar El Zenni. Capturing the love-hate relationship so many Beirutis have with the city, it was a fitting choice for the set list of one of her rare local appearances. The Paris-based singer-songwriter’s brooding public persona – “like a rapper” she doesn’t like to smile in photographs, preferring to fix the camera with a sultry stare – is at odds with her stage presence. At Sunday’s concert she danced herself breathless on several occasions, hips pistoning in a sensuous sway, arms moving above her slender body.
Performing a mixture of tracks from her most recent album, “Ya Nass” – produced by Marc Collins of Nouvelle Vague fame – and her 2009 album “Arabology” – produced by longtime Madonna collaborator Mirwais – Hamdan skillfully controlled the energy in the room.
From the hypnotic, droning melody of “Hal,” the single featured in Jim Jarmusch’s feature film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” to more rock-infused numbers, she moved from dreamy, introspective swaying to head-banging.
During her encore she was joined on stage by former bandmate Zeid Hamdan, the other half of seminal Arabic trip-hop outfit Soap Kills. The two performed together for the first time in years, in honor of the recent international release of a compilation album, “The Best of Soap Kills.”
“For me it was important to have him for this occasion and try a song together,” she says. “We’ve always been in touch, even though we don’t work together anymore, so it was a pleasure to have him with me on stage. It felt really nostalgic.”
Hamdan’s Beirut concert came in the midst of a hectic world tour that continues across Europe until September. One of few artists singing in Arabic to have created a broad international following, Hamdan says that performing in the Arab world is always exciting but somewhat nerve-wracking.
“Some people have been following my work for a long time,” she acknowledges, “so I always look forward to it. But there’s also some disquiet, some anxiety, because I don’t know how people will react. … I’m always very happy and anxious at the same time when I perform in an Arab country because I’m excited to see how it echoes, in me and in general and in the public.”
Hamdan sings exclusively in Arabic, performing a mixture of original material and loose interpretations of classics.
“I write a lot from scratch,” she says, “but I like to mix in some old songs, which are for me a source of inspiration. Some songs I find them so beautiful and I really sometimes feel that they were written for me or they are right for me to sing. So that’s my main drive. I desire these songs.
“I work with them as if you have a piece of wood and you shape it. I don’t just sing them. I really try to adapt them. I try to transform them into something that somehow resembles me. … I don’t think a song should stop in one version. Some songs can be reshaped – it’s like reincarnation.”
Between tour dates, she is working on new material.
“It takes me some time to put things together because I work and then I stop and I don’t plan things in a very organized way,” she explains. “Before I start working on an album I need to feel the urgency and a certain despair. I think it’s coming, but I don’t have the time to be desperate right now because I’m touring. … I need to have a void, to reflect, to contemplate, to imagine and to think about my next step.
“I’ve tried a lot of options,” she adds, “and I think when I start working seriously I will start to eliminate and add, eliminate and add, and come up with what I want. I think I have most of the songs. I’ve written them. I’ve worked on them. Some of them are older, some of them are newer. I might need to work on new ones still, but it can go very fast once I’m on it.”
For Hamdan, writing an album is a very intense process.
“When you enter into the phase of recording, for me it’s like doing sport,” she says.
“It feels great, but you have moments where you suffer, you have moments where it’s painful.
“When you’re writing an album or you’re working on an album you have lots of doubts. You have lots of joys and you have a lot of painful moments where you’re not inspired, and then suddenly you get inspired and you get so excited that life becomes so great. … So you have to be ready and accept that you’re going to have these ups and downs and it’s okay.”
Hamdan had a nomadic upbringing, living in the Gulf for some years, and then in Lebanon, before moving to Paris. She is known for her distinctive lyrics, which blend multiple Arabic dialects and sometimes use archaic words that are no longer part of the day-to-day language. While this is partly a result of her upbringing, she explains, it’s also an aesthetic choice.
“Some songs work better in one dialect than another,” she explains. “It’s important because I normally start with the melody and … it’s like an equation. A word has a rhythm, and the weight and tempo and the meaning need to all come together and work with the melody, so for me it’s like working on a formula. … So I have a lot of choices when I have many dialects. Some songs need to be more percussive, so for me it works better if it’s Iraqi or Kuwaiti.”
For non-Arabic speakers these shifts in dialect will often be undetectable, but Hamdan says that language isn’t a barrier to appreciating her music.
“[Non-Arabic speakers] don’t understand the lyrics so they get it in another way,” she reflects. “They live it in a way that is more sensorial. … I don’t believe in translation. I want to try for my next album to maybe do a better job, but it’s very difficult. … Some songs can sound very flat and not very interesting in translation, but in Arabic there’s a context and lots of layers of meanings.
“I dream when I listen to some singers and I don’t understand what they are talking about, but I don’t care because I get it. … If there’s a resonance, if there’s an emotion, then that’s sufficient.”
Source: www.dailystar.com.lb