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Natacha Atlas on Her 18th Solo Album and Taking Arabic Sounds to a New, Elevated Audience

Audacious, eclectic, and on a constant musical exploration, singer Natacha Atlas releases her 18th solo album, taking Arabic sounds to a new, elevated audience.

Dress, Georges Hobeika; turban, Paloma Germain; earrings, Goossens. Photo: Jeremy Zaessinger. Vogue Arabia, September 2022

Natacha Atlas is a globetrotter with multicultural roots and no permanent residence. It is between a rehearsal in Macedonia and a photoshoot in Paris that the singer and songwriter speaks of her career, her inspirations, and her love for Arab music. An internationally acclaimed and multilingual artist, she creates unique musical embroideries that weave jazz and oriental tunes with electronic sounds. Atlas’s 18th record, The Inner & The Outer , is an emotional and contemplative journey. “It’s a musical reaction to the challenges society has faced since the start of the pandemic,” comments the artist. “It manifests fear, mistrust, anger, confusion, and the discomfort experienced in a world where we no longer know how to trust our own realities.” The mirror of its maker, the album is full of hope, with poetic notes and vocals.

2001’s Ayeshteni album

Atlas’s music has spanned much of the globe for the past two decades, selling over a million records. Her latest album pushes her boundaries by fusing Middle Eastern Maqam vocabularies (melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music) with a blend of jazz-infused, 21st-century electronics. She integrates her deep and expressive vocals in English and Arabic. The album was made in collaboration with old friends such as composer, musician, and sound artist Jason Singh and Egyptian violinist, pianist, programmer, and long-time partner Samy Bishai, with whom she produced, recorded, and cowrote the album. “With Samy, I got to know about the language of jazz,” she shares. “He gave me an almost A to Z encyclopedic world tour of jazz and how it has developed.” This album adds to Atlas’s impressive catalog of work and achievements, which includes music awards such as a Victoire de la Musique trophy – the French equivalent of the Grammy Awards. She has also appeared on scores and soundtracks of numerous Hollywood blockbusters, including Sex and the City 2, The Hulk, Brick Lane, and Sahara .

Dress, Caftan Paris; turban, Barcha Paris; earrings, Ōkan Studio; necklace, Annelise Michelson; pin, Goossens. Photo: Jeremy Zaessinger. Vogue Arabia, September 2022

What makes Atlas the unique artist she is today is the combination of her audacity, ambition, and continuous musical exploration. Rare is the artist who can sustain multiple visions; Atlas has proven that it is possible. “It is just a natural progression,” she shrugs. Since her debut in the 1990s, she has managed to reinvent herself, adapting to new genres. Her live performances send audiences into a state of joy and emotional exchange. Her music displays respect, resilience, and pertinence, but also encouragement – all shared feelings that tie Arab people together, everywhere.

With a Victoire de la Musique trophy

Born in Belgium to an English mother and an Egyptian father, Atlas draws on her rich cultural heritage to create her music. Growing up between Brussels and Cairo, she was exposed to worldwide music thanks to her father’s extensive cassette collection. Her inspiration and influences stem from European classical pieces to Arabic music, Turkish folk, and Indian sounds. From the Arabic classical artists, she mentions her admiration for Fairuz, Umm Kulthum, and Abdel Halim Hafez, as well as pop artists like Nancy Ajram whom she describes as “bubbly, cheeky, and sweet, which is lovely.” Atlas also developed an affinity for Indian musicians like Ravi and Ananda Shankar and Bollywood artists such as Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar. “I loved Indian films as a child,” she mentions. “My favorite was director and actor Manoj Kumar’s 1974 masterpiece Roti Kapda Aur Makaan. I remember how often I would hear words that would sound like Arabic,” she continues. “The meaning was the same, but the pronunciation was different. I’m thinking about words like donya, makaan, and mushkilla to name a few. One sees how there are commonalities and exchanges between different cultures.”

Shirt and skirt, Fendi; turban, Paloma Germain; earrings and bracelet, Goossens. Photo: Jeremy Zaessinger. Vogue Arabia, September 2022

Informed by her multicultural identity at the crossroads between East and West, Atlas also developed a deep appreciation for artists such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, and Jeff Beck. Yearning to be a part of the bustling London music scene, she moved to the English capital in the 1990s during her late teens. “I was eager to find young, like-minded people with that mix of culture,” she remembers. “It meant that they, too, wanted to find an outlet for expression that included their duality. They were open enough to explore how this could work with others who were interested in multicultural dynamics. London was the only way forward,” she recalls. At the time, the city was the birthplace of a new generation of multinational artists and musicians pushing the limits of music and experimenting with new sounds. There, Atlas met with executives at record label Nation Records who introduced her to the members of Transglobal Underground, a UK-based, multi-ethnic music collective fusing different kinds of world sounds. Her musical journey had begun.

Natacha Atlas’s 2001 single Ne me quitte pas

Later, in 1995, Atlas released her first solo album Diaspora . She combined the dub, rhythmic-driven global dance sound so distinctive of her musical associates at Transglobal Underground with the more traditional work of classical Arabic musicians. The result was a collection of songs of love and desire that genuinely merged West and East. In 1998, she delivered an Arabic fusion cover of Françoise Hardy’s pop song Mon amie la rose that charted in Europe. Later, her 2006 album Mish Maoul wed Arabic, electronic, and organic beats to Latin sounds and bossa nova. “I loved her music when I first heard her version of the French song Mon amie la rose . I felt in her interpretation a great understanding of East and West, something I always deal with in my own work, mixing both worlds,” recalls Egyptian artist Youssef Nabil . The two struck up a friendship, with Nabil and Atlas collaborating a great deal in the early 2000s. “We met with the understanding that we both came from the same part of the world and we both are dealing and concerned with the same issues. Her music and her voice are unique; she is the one who opened that door internationally for oriental music 30 years ago, since her collaboration as a lead singer with the band Transglobal Underground.”

Dress, Alexis Mabille; shoes, Christian Louboutin; necklace, Ōkan Studio; ring, Annelise Michelson. Photo: Jeremy Zaessinger. Vogue Arabia, September 2022

To date, across her 18 solo albums, Atlas has collaborated with great artists and musicians such as Peter Gabriel, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Ibrahim Maalouf. Atlas has also partnered with choreographers, composing scores for performances. The latest is a collaboration with Algerian-French choreographer Hervé Koubi, for whom she co-composed Odyssey in 2021 with Bishai. The show brings together 17 performers with rich and varied Mediterranean roots who take turns embodying the figure of Ulysses, embarking on a poetic and dreamlike journey, and carried by Atlas’s haunting voice. “Samy and I are planning a collaboration with the BBC orchestra to turn the music from Odyssey into an orchestral work,” she reveals. “You learn a lot about human interactions through collaboration,” muses Atlas. “The creative side is a process, a new experience, which makes you grow artistically. To have this opportunity is a gift. I would even say God-given. It is a blessing, even when obstacles arise… Each opportunity is a chance to evolve both musically and emotionally.” For Atlas, fashion and music are intricately linked. They are both a method of demonstrating individuality, beliefs, and ideas, and the singer’s musical trajectory expands to the world of fashion. Christian Louboutin and Atlas met over 20 years ago, when she was living in Cairo. “Natacha is one of the most innovative artists I have ever met in my life,” comments Louboutin. “She manages to write stories into her music. Her voice crosses cultures and expresses her love for melodies, not only in music, but also in dance, theater, and choreography.” This year, the designer invited Atlas and Bishai to compose and record a score for his Fall 2022 presentation, inspired by his love for dance and performance art. “It was obvious for me, when we did the Loubishow in Paris at the Niemeyer space, to have her talent enhance the performance,” he continues, adding that the experience was an “incredibly prolific musical process.” The result is an atmospheric, varied performance that constantly switches direction, an amalgamation of Western and Eastern sound, with the hypnotizing voice of Atlas. “We really like doing this kind of work, especially if we can be experimental and try new ideas,” comments Atlas. Another fashion project the duo created was in 2020. They composed the score for the UK concept-driven fashion brand Cottweiler Spring Summer 2020 digital runway show. On stage, Atlas is undeniably Arab, dressed in a traditional Egyptian jalabiya. She tends to favor Arabic designers, mentioning the work of Anthony Hamdan Djendeli, a new designer based in LA of Arab origin; of Suzy Tamimi; and of Karim Tassi, who has featured her music in his fashion shows in Morocco.

Vinta Ge Fabric Turban, Paloma Germain; earrings, Bracelet (left hand) and cross necklace, Goossens; necklace, Ōkan Studio; ring (left hand), Annelise  (and Atlas’s own); bracelets (Right Hand), The Parisian Vintage; rings (right hand), Goossens. Photo: Jeremy Zaessinger. Vogue Arabia, September 2022

Atlas’s voice seduces; her music is honest and engaged, backed by a deep cultural appreciation, rich in nuances, and proudly grounded in Arab heritage. “My favorite music will always be Arabic music and the Mawal, a traditional and popular Arabic genre of vocal music that is very slow in beat and sentimental in nature. Its beauty will always be my biggest influence and my greatest love,” she says. Atlas will tour Europe this month and will perform at the Th éâtr e de Grasse in October with Hervé Koubi for the Odyssey show. No matter her location, Arabic is always in her heart. “Whenever the call to prayer would ring out across the city, we would stop rehearsing just to listen to the beauty of the voices in Arabic… melodically floating over the hill, valleys, and streets. It captivates me. In my opinion, vocally, there is no better sound.”

Originally published in the September 2022 issue of Vogue Arabia

Read Next:  6 Rising Female Moroccan Singers to Have on Your Radar

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The Inner & The Outer

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Natacha Atlas is an internationally-acclaimed artist with one of the world’s most distinctive voices. She is long known for synthesising western and middle eastern vocal traditions with mind-blowing dexterity, pushing vocal and musical boundaries.

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supported by 48 fans who also own “The Inner & The Outer”

The music ist a wonderful combination of Jazz with oriental sounds; wonderful arrangements; and the clear, tender voice of Natacha Atlas is so brillant. topsycat

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Been a fan since the first single... love this album. Thankyou. Only disappointment is my favourite tracks are on the download and not on the vinyl. Please press up a 12" single of the missing tracks c/w the last single (like the download) :) . Otherwise, wonderful album that has brought a huge amount of pleasure during these dark times. Martin James

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• Nafs el hikaya
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Natacha Atlas shakes off her 'belly-dancing' image with new Arab-jazz album

The anglo-egyptian singer says she has come a long way from being the belly-dancing performer of the 1990s.

Natacha Atlas performs as part of the 2019 Oslo World Festival. Courtesy Lars Opstad / Oslo World

T he new album from Natacha Atlas is a promise fulfilled . After a decade of gently probing the extremities of jazz music, the acclaimed British-Egyptian singer has at last stepped into the genre with both feet on Strange Days .

It is all done in her own imitable style, however – w hile the compositions are nocturnal, minimal and full of space, Atlas's heritage remains at the forefront with vocals rich in Middle Eastern melodies.

[  Natacha Atlas back in the studio with Transglobal Underground for new album  ]

[  Oslo World festival continues to shine a spotlight on the Arab world  ]

[  Cultural capital: Abu Dhabi is a city to contend with on the global events calendar  ]

It is an album that can go some ways in hopefully reclaiming the true meaning of the term "fusion", which over the decades has cynically been rendered to musical works that can charitably be described as pastiche. Strange Days is anything but. It is, instead, an intensive and thought-provoking blend of two distinct musical worlds, each with its own history and principles. This is why Atlas took her time to produce it.

In an exclusive interview with The National from the Oslo World music festival, Atlas describes her her eventual arrival to jazz, and how it required a certain skill set and personal bravery.

"There is a lot to consider when you are doing something like this because you want to make it authentic, otherwise what is the point?" she says. "I have always been skirting around the periphery of jazz music and slowly getting there. A lot of that is down to my band, who are great jazz musicians.

"The funny thing is, I love jazz and they love Arabic music – this is why there has always been a mix of the two. But for this album, I wanted to come closer to my band, so to speak. I wanted the new music to give them space to show what they can really do."

Meet the band behind the new album

Strange Days is indeed a dazzlingly collaborative work. The drumming by Asaf Sirkis is full of flair , particularly the hip-hop licks he provides in the pulsating Maktoob . Deftly anchoring both western and oriental sounds across the album is Andy Hamill on double bass, while Hayden Powell delivers a majestic trumpet solo in the cinematic opener Out of Time .

Leading the band is Atlas's chief collaborator, Egyptian violinist Samy Bi shai . As well as being in the producer's chair on the album, he wa s also responsible for co-writing many of the songs on Strange Days .

Having him on board was essential, Atlas says, as their respective backgrounds meant they were often on the same page. Atlas, 55, was born in Brussels to a British mother and Egyptian father, and has lived in various countries , including Egypt, Greece and, at present, the UK.

Bi shai's early life followed a relatively similar path. "We met 11 years ago when I was performing in Switzerland and we are both Anglo-Egyptian," Atlas says. "The interesting thing about him is in how his background is also opposed to me in a few ways. I grew up in Europe while he was born in Al Khobar [a city in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province] before he moved to Egypt and then England."

The lyrics are inspired by today's political unrest

Those distinct backgrounds resulted in the tumultuous subject matter of Strange Days . Despite Atlas's serene and almost celestial vocals , the album is a dark and broody collection of songs questioning the dire state of the world.

Out of Time is full of foreboding metaphors with "strangers running out of time" and "rivers running dry ". In Maktoob (That Which is Written), which is sung in Arabic, Atlas explores the relationship between the Islamic concept of predetermination and our will as human beings.

The dystopian themes in the album are not merely a style, Atlas says. Many of the subjects discussed have been triggered by the political turmoil of the modern day.

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"You have the Extinction Rebellion group and you have all these pockets of groups that are trying to fight against what's going on globally and economically with a message that says if we need to evolve, we're not going to survive," she says.

Although Atlas now lives in the South of France , she does not feel removed from what has been happening in the streets of Egypt and Lebanon over the years. "While it may seem like I am an outsider looking in, a lot of the album is informed by what is happening in the Arab world," she says. "A lot of that is down to Samy's brother, Nabil, living in Egypt . So Sam y would go to Egypt regularly and we get the inside story of how the people truly feel in these challenging times."

And it is working. With the album having only been out a few weeks, Atlas describes the reception from fans as immense.

People have been telling me how they are touched with the new music,” she says. “Someone said the songs are making him think about things he was trying to avoid. That is just brilliant.”

Two worlds collide: how Atlas melds Arab music with jazz

Atlas's next challenge is recreating that atmosphere, not to mention nailing the evocative vocals, on tour. Judging by her successful Oslo gig, she  and her band managed to rise to the demands of melding both Middle Eastern vocal scales with the shape shifting nature of jazz music.

Atlas says it is a challenge for everyone on stage to continually overcome. “As an Arabic singer my challenge is to be aware of all the harmonic changes in jazz music.

Because in the Arabic modal style, we improvise but really stay in that same melodic circle, so to speak, w hile in jazz, you move around when it comes to harmony, s o you really have to listen to what is going on and you need to be agile enough to do that," she says.

“While the challenge for the musicians when it comes to playing Arabic melodies is capturing the spirit of the music. Arabic music is not just about having technical ability, it is about [its] feel. The band have been doing a great job with this.”

Atlas says the positive reception to Strange Days serves as more validation for the career risks she took over her three-decade career. After attracting interest by appearing and co-writing five tracks on the 1991 album Rising Above Bedlam by the British band Invaders of the Heart , led by former Public Image Limited bassist Jah Wobble, she caught the attention of Transglobal Underground, who invited Atlas to be part of the London world music collective.

The partnership resulted in a string of successful albums, including the minor classic 1991 debut album Dreams of 100 Nations which, 28 years later, still sounds exciting and otherworldly.

While proud of the album's success, Atlas said she found herself increasingly trapped in an international music industry more interested in exoticism than shedding light on new international talent.

“I would have to say that it was mostly the European promoters and music festivals that wanted me to just stick to belly dancing and costumes, where I just wanted to evolve,” she says. “I broke out of that through sheer will. And that’s my advice to artists, no matter where you are. Stay open.

“Be connected to what is going on and don’t be forced into do anything. Keep look ing forward.”

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Wednesday 25 October 2023

Natacha Atlas

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NATACHA ATLAS

Globally celebrated singer Natacha Atlas has been building towards the subtle beauty of her brand new album ever since 2008’s internationally acclaimed acoustic, orchestral album Ana Hina .  Recorded with guests including pianist Zoe Rahman, a 20-piece Turkish ensemble and a chamber orchestra integrating western and Arabic styles, Mounqaliba  (which means  being in a state of reversal’ in classical Arabic) is a stunning set of original new songs, evocative interludes, and a limpid, lucid reading of Nick Drake’s The Riverman .

”What I hope I have achieved” says Natacha ”is to match the lyricism of classical music with the inherent poetry of Arabic, I wanted to continue the exploration of grounds covered with Ana Hina . Through the juxtaposition of western classical string sections with traditional Arabic instruments, classical arabic poetry against abstract impressionism, traditional Arabic percussion with smoky jazz kits……. To create a melange of ideas and examined opposites. What I attempt  to convey is a sense of reversal…. Reversal of the state of society, reversal in our political and belief systems, reversal of spirituality in favour of materialism.” Spanning a broad range of styles and sounds, Nick Drake’s Riverman nestles snugly alongside classical arabic standard Muwashah Ozkourini , the utopian epic sweep of Makaan (tempering wistfulness with a fragile sadness) and the post-modern glitchiness of Batkallim (the most electronic sounding song on the album, a scathing denunciation of the growing tide of hypocrisy that seems to have stricken the world’s media and politics).

The majority of the songs on Mounqaliba were co-written in classical Arabic with Natacha’s musical partner Samy Bishai, who was brought up in Egypt and taught western classical violin by Russians and Armenians in Alexandria. The two of them began work on what would become Mounqaliba just days after concluding an 18-month world tour of Ana Hina in November 2009.

For Natacha, working on the album has been an intense process of creation played out in the confines of a southeast London recording studio overlooking the container ports of the Thames – an apt location in which to fashion her trademark fusion of Arabic and western music. “I’ve been much more involved in the musical composition on this album. I’ve been more involved from start to finish here than on any other album I’ve ever made.”

The title track began as “a lament about the state of the world, about how we seem to be in a state of reversal, how everything is cock-eyed and upside down and we are far from being civilised. It’s like we’re in the dark ages in some perverse modern way, so it was a lament. But it ended up as an instrumental with voices on it – but no words.”

Though the album’s main themes are dark, that darkness is leavened by the likes of Nafoura ( Fountain ) , a lullaby based on one of Natacha’s poems, and which closes the album with a paean to love and its illuminating powers with the words “you are my fountain of light, you are my secret garden.” There is also a buoyant and joyous reading of a 400-year-old Mwashah – excerpted from an epic of classical Arabic poetry – arranged by Atlas and Bishai in the east-west orchestral style of the Rahbani Brothers.

Alongside a 400-year-old cover comes her beautifully lush, liquid reading of Nick Drake’s classic Riverman , and a new song from Transglobal’s Tim Whelan and Natacha’s cousin (and regular percussionist) Aly El Minyawi .

La Nuit Est Sur La Ville finds Natacha revisiting Francoise Hardy’s repertoire for an acoustic/Arabic/pop rendition of one of Hardy’s more obscure self-penned songs. Taalet , alternatively, is an endearingly perky wedding song that seduces and thrills with its charm (and a full Turkish string section, recorded in Istanbul), whilst serving as a vignette of traditional middle-eastern folkloric life.

Though largely acoustic, and featuring ney, accordion and piano among the fusion of East-West string ensembles and orchestral textures, Natacha does make a return to digital beats. “There is one track where we’ve treated the Arabic percussion with electronic programming.

A lot of the time when Arabic music is fused with western music they conform the Arabic beats to western beats because it’s one of the easiest ways to bring the two worlds together, but we’ve not done that, we’ve glitched it instead, so it has a modern feel without losing its Arabic identity.”Touches of electronic sound design – along with field recordings from Cairo, Marrakech and elsewhere – appear on the album’s six cinematic ‘interludes’, which also features her Turkish keyboard player singing in the powerful, intricate muezzin style, and the words and ideas of Peter Joseph from the Zeitgeist movement. “He narrated a movie called Addendum , which is about the monetary system. He says really thought-provoking things – about how the monetary system was created, how it works, and how it doesn’t work and how there’s no intrinsic incentive to solve any profitable problems. So with the album title, and this idea of us going into reversal, back to chaos, I thought it would be interesting to use these excerpts. And Peter Joseph gave us kind permission to use what we wanted. We have six interludes and they make interesting cinematic musical journeys on their own. They have a programmatic purpose within the album, correlating to the music around them. So for me it truly is a concept album, it’s not something I’ve ever done before.”

Natacha Atlas

Captivating and hypnotic singer from North Africa, entwining tribal beats with blusey cool Afro-funk. She is famed for her collaborations with more...

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Egypt, United Kingdom