EMEL on Identity, Womanhood, and Her Unwavering Fearlessness
Often referred to as the “voice of the Arab Spring,” EMEL gained international recognition when her song “Kelmti Horra (My Word is Free),” once banned, became an anthem of the Tunisian Revolution in 2011. Two years later, she played an underground concert in Baghdad, Iraq, as well as a highly illegal, all-women performance in Iran, as chronicled in the documentary No Land’s Song. Just last year, she performed for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, facing intense public backlash.
Her latest album, MRA, was entirely female-made, courting various women from around the globe to take part in its production.
Strikingly brave, intelligent, and defiant, if a pen is a sword, then EMEL’s is a chainsaw. If 2025 is a misogynist’s dream, then EMEL is their worst nightmare.
KP: Your latest album, MRA, was 100% woman-made, something that is so incredibly rare in the music industry today, though it shouldn't be. I think we can all surmise the reasons that you chose to do this, but I just wanted to give you the ability to speak to it yourself.
E: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm not the bravest woman or feminist out there. I like to think of myself as a rebel and a revolutionary and a feminist by definition – by default – but then I realized that in ten years of recording albums, I have relied on 99% male collaborators in every field of the music-making process, which I felt was terribly wrong.
I think as women, we have the responsibility towards each other – not just towards ourselves – because then it just becomes an ego trip. I don't think that it's enough to present ourselves in the front like, “I'm a survivor, I'm an advocate, I'm brave” – because then what are you actually doing? What's the action you've been taking? So that's how it kind of started.
Also, originally, I was with a record label. We started talking about a new album, and they wanted me to work with this producer that I didn't really like. All of a sudden I had this question in my head, like, “Why does it have to be a guy, anyway?” It was also a way of me standing my ground and saying, “Oh, well actually, I want to work with a woman.”
But then the problem is that you very quickly reach the end of the list of who everyone is able to suggest. So after the three, four, five of the same names that everyone is trying to work with, you just get back to where you started. I thought that was an even bigger reason for me to keep digging and not give up. It was a really difficult adventure. Honestly, it was exciting; it was amazing.
I felt that I was right to have chosen that path every step of the way, with every collaboration, with every studio session, but I can't lie – it was really difficult. Also, now that I'm doing the album live, it's even harder to find the right women to perform it.
KP: Yeah, women in music production are so rare. I spoke to Linda Perry, who is one of my favorite producers, a couple of years ago, and even she was saying that we are just so underrepresented in terms of production in music. It’s a very big issue when you really start to unpack what that means in terms of the music industry – in terms of women not only being seen, but also being heard.
But you released MRA under your own record label, Little Human, which is becoming increasingly popular among artists today, particularly female artists who want to guarantee their own autonomy in such an authoritative industry. It takes a lot of confidence to step out on your own like that, so every time I speak to an artist for Noir that has self-released, I always ask: what has been the greatest risk and the greatest reward from stepping out on your own? Is there anything that you wish you knew sooner about the process?
E: Oh, I love these questions. I'll start with the reward. I don't know if it's a curse or a reward, but I know that a lot of the mainstream artists that I encounter envy me for the freedom that I have – that I've always had. I was so scared to get shelved or boxed or abused when I started in music, you know, all of those classic things that we women go through, right? I was super, super cautious.
So unconsciously, I just went towards my freedom and the freedom of creativity and authenticity. I think the reward is that, at the end of the day, I'm always super, super satisfied and proud of everything that I do. I'm so satisfied with my legacy, even though that legacy is not money. It might not be the greatest recognition, but I know that whatever I've done, I will always defend it 100%. When I listen to my first album, when I listen to my second album, I just feel so content and so proud. I think that's something that is really hard to achieve.
So I think that's the best reward – to make awesome music. For me, sometimes I see some artists collaborating with super, super famous artists. And I try to imagine if I would be that person, but then I'm like, “No, that song sucks.”
KP: [Laughs].
E: Being in a studio with, like, I don't know, Coldplay or something – and not being authentic both musically and artistically – I don't think that I could ever do that. So at least I never compromised my soul artistically.
But of course the biggest risk is being on your own. Doing all of these jobs and not having enough support, not just financially, but, you know, not having a full chain of people around you doing their jobs. Instead, you have to do so many different jobs yourself. So this is the risk and the reward.
And probably what I would have wanted to know is what it takes to, I don't know, like, have big streaming numbers, for example. It's always a mystery to me. You know, when I started, I was like an A student – I thought that if you worked hard and you write good music and a beautiful song and beautiful melodies –
KP: That streams will come.
E: Yeah, exactly. Because if you start compromising and doing something that's not exactly you and the reward you think you’re going to get never comes, then you're duly punished. So yeah, it's tricky.
KP: Very tricky. I mean, it's almost like running a business on your own and wearing twenty hats at once. I'm not in music, but I do understand [business].
E: Yeah, exactly. And that's actually the other thing about being a female artist – you never put the right names on what you're doing; you're always stepping on your tippy toes. So, for instance, it took me a long time before admitting to myself, “Well, actually, I am a producer. I am this.”
And, of course, there's always a woman that does something first so that another woman gets some credit for herself. I remember seeing Björk crediting herself for a bassline – at first I thought it was ridiculous, but then I found myself thinking that you have to credit yourself for everything that you're doing. Yeah, I am fully like a CEO and a COO.
KP: But it also took a lot of bravery to step out on your own in that way. Especially knowing why you did it now, I think it's even more admirable. What advice would you offer to women who seek creative or personal independence but may be lacking in the confidence to do so?
E: I mean, you have to fake the confidence. And I think the best advice is to surround yourself with friends and other artists. As women – and this is why actually I also made this album – we have to create a community. As artists, we're very bad at being in a community because we're taught that we are rivals, but as women, we're taught even more so, to treat each other as rivals. So I would say to just surround yourself with awesome women, just like you, and to support each other.
KP: I think that's great advice. The release for the album itself expresses two incredibly important concepts, particularly in today's increasingly challenging landscape – one that speaks to “human perseverance meant to rouse us from complacency to empathy” and the other that calls for “compassion and a call to action.”
In a world that is so hateful, in a world that is filled with such brutality, it is radical to be soft, to be empathetic, and to love. How do you avoid becoming hardened or jaded to everything that's going on around us? How do you still show compassion and also have the will to fight?
E: Oh my God, how much time do you have for this one?
KP: [Laughs]. You could give an abridged version, if you’d like.
E: I mean, yeah, it's an everyday problem. If I'm going to give some credit to myself, and I don't often do it – I think that compassion has always been a part of me. I don't think that you can be an artist if you don't have compassion, and I don't think that it can ever go away. Every act of creation is an act of compassion, whether towards your environment, towards yourself, or towards your audience. I don't think that any song you write can come from a place that is not compassionate. This is how I see it.
To avoid becoming overwhelmed, I'm trying to work on creating more empathy and more compassion – because to me, I think that's the basis of everything. It’s every solution that we need to find for everything that's going wrong, whether here, in Palestine, or anywhere else in the world. Once you have compassion, you can think from a place of love, from a place of altruism. I think the more we know of each other, the more we get inspired by each other – by each other's culture, by each other's music. When you love music from someplace in the world, that's a step into compassion, because it just connects with the most beautiful parts in us.
In terms of not becoming jaded, I think I've always had hope. I think as humans, it's very hard to lose hope, even in spite of everything. There are moments where we do feel bitter, but I try to think of the quantities of hope that I have inside – maybe because my name means “hope.”
KP: Oh, really? I love that. You have a beautiful name; I love it.
E: Thank you. So even in my darkest moments, hope finds itself. And obviously creating music and singing has always been my response to darkness. And the conversations like this one, with some friends, watching a movie, reading a book – that always refills whatever positive and hopeful parts are in us. That's why art is so important – it's kind of like a cycle.
KP: Absolutely, it’s so true.
There's certainly a need for a female-driven paradigm shift in nearly every aspect of society today. How do you think we can go about enacting enough change as women together to make that happen? What actions can we begin to take to move towards that in our own personal ways? I think an example of this could be you creating this album and having it be 100% women-made in the first place.
E: Yeah, thank you for saying that, exactly. I do believe that in order for us to go towards any significant and positive change, we need to flip to a matriarchy. I don't think that any woman, even deep down, would disagree. Most of the people that laugh at me when I say that are guys – even my greatest friends – I think because, ultimately, they feel threatened.
And I think we're in this situation because guys have felt threatened by us over and over and over. So eventually we turned into, I would say, the most oppressed – not even minority – but the most oppressed majority of all time.
I feel that the world has been broken by a system that was ruled by patriarchy. Anything that we learned, all the reflexes that we have, all the rules that were created – they were created within that unfair system. So in order to go back to something that's more fair for everyone, we need to let women be in charge completely, which is why I made this album.
I know that the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was asked what her dream was, she said it was a Supreme Court with nine female justices, and people were shocked. And she said, “It's been nine guys forever, and no one was ever shocked.” I think exactly the same.
“Every act of creation is an act of compassion.”
KP: I think that's a great answer. Of course, I totally agree.
You worked with women from across the globe on this project, having spent countless hours scouting and recruiting them from nearly every continent, as we mentioned earlier. How important do you think a globalized network of women is today? Being someone with multiple bases yourself, do you suggest that we all connect with each other globally to ensure freedom for all of us?
E: Oh my God, I'm loving this question so much. Question of the year. You're just touching all the essentials of what I was trying to aim for.
Of course, my idea was to work with women, but then I very quickly I realized, “Well, I have to include female rappers. Now that I'm discovering all these amazing women producers, I should include female rappers. They must have it even harder than female producers.” And then once I started working with female rappers, I thought, “Well, I need a female rapper from Africa. Then I need an Arab-speaking female rapper. Then I need an Iranian female rapper.” Because – let's admit it – how much of the world is open to embracing an Iranian female rapper, you know?”
So all of these women, we share this struggle just to carve out a place for ourselves. It’s undeniable that the world of music is harder for me being an African Arab woman, especially one that expresses herself in a language other than English.
So, to me, the girls ultimately were laughing, calling this album “The United Colors of EMEL.”
KP: [Laughs]. That’s so funny.
E: But to me, I wasn't doing it to be like, “Oh, this is a global music album, this is a global world, blah, blah, blah.” It just came really naturally. I just also loved myself embracing different cultures, but also connecting. We connect – we have the same struggle… Camélia Jordana, who is half Algerian and half French, who is navigating in her career in France, has the same struggle as Justina, who was from Iran, as Lyzza, who was from Brazil, but who is also carving her way as an amazing female producer in the Netherlands.
We're all navigating many different cultures – we're all trying to not be pigeonholed. We're as comfortable in rock music as we are in electronic music, as we are in our culture.
So I love this album because it was such a free expression and such a cultural expression because, just like I said, when we open the boundaries and the barriers between us, we all love the same things. We all have emotions. We all get moved by a moving performance. There are no differences. We have the same expression, except we have different colors and different ways of expressing ourselves.
KP: Absolutely, I totally agree.
We spoke about this a little bit earlier, but I want to share your quote about women trusting each other, being strengthened by each other's power, and shunning the very limiting beliefs of who we can be.
You said, “I want us to change the system from within, by and through women. We are building a new structure, writing a new story where we reclaim the women's voice and her power.”
For as long as history can reveal, women have relentlessly been pitted against one another, forced to see each other as competitors instead of allies. Is there any moment in particular that stands out to you that helped you unlearn this as a woman?
E: Yeah. I think for most of my career, I was the only woman surrounded by guys, and for a long time, I was proud of that. And the day I realized how wrong that was, that's the day that I realized I needed to unlearn this. I have to break the idea that we're not good to each other, you know?
KP: Right.
E: And, unfortunately, it's still such a hard thing to put into people's brains, in women's brains, because I keep seeing all of these women just getting validation from and surrounding themselves with so many guys.
And the problem is, what do guys do? They do exactly the same. Guys only surround themselves with other guys. So when you ask a musician, like, “Hey, do you know a light designer? Do you know a sound engineer?” They are always like, “Yeah, I know a guy.” It's always a guy. And even when it's not actually a guy, you know, we would be referring by definition – like in France, for example, where I spend a lot of time – where there's a feminine and a masculine, we would be referring to a sound engineering job or a production job in the masculine. I think that's a problem – we need to change the language. We need to change the way that we're looking at each other. And that's why it's about representation.
As a little girl, when you see a woman doing any job, unconsciously you just grow up thinking, “Oh yeah, I can do that.” That's why we need more women. We need more women supporting women.
KP: Yeah, and keeping each other as enemies only keeps us oppressed.
As women, we are often viewed as binaried individuals in ways that are inherently harmful to our expansive vastness. We're either nurturing mothers or we're selfish and childless. We're submissive or bitches. We're virgins or whores.
In your life as an Arab woman from Africa, you have spoken of being viewed in the West as only exotic or political, stripping both your and your work of their rightful complex existences.
How did you find the perseverance to live your life and to explore your work unshackled by such limiting beliefs that the world can have about you?
E: Gosh. Well, first of all, there are a lot of things that we want to unlearn from our families – I think one of them is being stubborn.
KP: Yeah, me too. [Laughs].
“I don’t think I found the bravery – the bravery found me.”
E: And it's sad that a lot of our stubbornness is labeled as being a bitch. So I think the more I see how my culture can be wrongly perceived or just treated super superficially, I’ve kind of made it my life purpose to change that, honestly. And just even to open doors for the girls after me, and I'm starting to see doors opening, even though – unfortunately – I see a lot of the new generation also reproducing the same clichés of exoticism, where, as Arabs, we only exist through being an exotic bellydancer or an oppressed woman.
KP: They’re always two extremes, right?
E: Yeah, exactly. So we're making progress, just not as quickly as I would like. I've always felt comfortable being an outsider, but at the same time, like at every show, I see how much people are moved and are empowered, and that's actually what keeps me going.
KP: I love that.
Your entire career has really been an act of defiance. In 2010, you were named the voice of Arab Spring when your folk-hymn, “Kelmti Horra (My Word Is Free),” once banned, was resurrected as a protest anthem. You later went on to perform this same track at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Just two years later, you played an underground concert in Baghdad, Iraq, as well as a highly illegal, all-women performance in Iran, as chronicled in the documentary No Land’s Song. Just last year, you also performed for Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, facing much backlash.
It is my belief that for us to further ourselves as women, we don’t need to ask permission – we need to bite – and you bite. How do you find the bravery and inner strength to take such stands in the face of harsh criticism, adversity, and even threats to your freedom?
E: I don’t think I found the bravery – the bravery found me.
KP: I love that even more.
E: No, sometimes I laugh at myself because I think that I could have been five times more famous. I could have made five times more money. I could have achieved five hundred more goals. And then I have a self-talk, and I'll be like, “Alright, alright. I'm gonna pay attention. I’m going to be more docile.”
I just remember last summer, I performed at SummerStage in New York and my ex-manager was like, “Alright, so I know at the end of the day, you're going to say what you're going to say, but can you please not show any flags?” And I was like, “Yeah, of course. Of course. You don't even have to say it.”
And then as we were working on the video for the show, I just found this incredible image of this freedom fighter with a flag, and we incorporated it into the video – I didn't even have a single thought about it. And once I finished the performance, one of my friends was like, “Oh my God, what kind of passport do you have? Because you did this and you did that.” Oh my God, I didn’t even think about it. I just don't think, actually – I just do.
KP: Me too! [Laughs].
E: I just like, you know, carry this music sword, this art flag.
KP: Well, ultimately, it achieves a lot. So I think it's a pretty good way to be.
E: Thank you.
KP: What do you feel makes a provocative woman?
E: What doesn't make a provocative woman? I feel that to be a woman, you have to be provocative; otherwise, you won’t be heard.
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Photography: Amber Grey
