Emel Mathlouthi

COLLIS BROWNE: I’m honored to be having this conversation with you for our new column, Music is Political. Welcome! Who you are and how do you like to describe yourself.

EMEL MATHLOUTHI: My name is Emel, which means hope. It’s a name my parents gave me because they were trying to catch some hope from life and the new beginning. I think that name really defines me, because I’ve always been a very euphorically hopeful person, despite myself. I like to define myself through this concept of hope. And then I like to define myself as an Arab African, maybe a Berber or Tunisian woman. I don’t feel a sense of belonging only to where I come from and where I was born. I feel a sense of belonging to every culture I feel in my heart and that welcomes me. For instance, I feel home in Turkey. I love Kurdish music. I love New York. I love Paris.

I grew up with a lot of curiosity, and I’m very grateful for that. You can hear it in my music. I love to get inspired by many different rhythms. I love to be connected to my culture and to the things I grew up with that really vibrate inside me. I never wanted to direct my music to one kind of audience. I’m speaking to anyone who has a heart and wants to vibrate with emotions. I’ve always used music as a tool of rebellion and resistance, because I grew up under dictatorship. When I say dictatorship, I don’t mean just the government or the country. Dictatorship within society and within family. I grew up with a very conservative mother. I felt oppressed from a very young age. When I was eight, I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to express myself in ways I didn’t think were allowed, and art felt like a beautiful escape. So, the idea of art or music was connected with liberation, with trying to break free. I’ve always wanted to break free even before I really understood it.

I got passionate about singing and began to realize that this was going to be my life’s purpose. It helped that I grew up with a father who had an amazing collection of vinyls. Sheikh Imam is one of the most amazing Arab musicians ever. He’s the definition of human sacrifice for justice and freedom. He spent most of his life in prison. He would get out and write songs, then go back to prison, write more songs, get out and sing them, and then go back to prison. I remember vividly the moment I started feeling this is why I’m going to play music… to provoke this feeling inside other people. If I can do that… that would be the most beautiful life purpose.

When I listened to Sheikh Imam or Marcel Khalife, I felt so strong and powerful; I felt like I could break free. My goal was to start with my own compatriots. I felt that I needed to be responsible, to shake people and tell them that they had to believe in themselves. They had to believe in their power to decide for themselves, their life and their future.

COLLIS BROWNE: Tell me about your journey with this spirit of liberation that draws us from the personal, and then moves us out into the family, into smaller society, into broader society, and then into the world at large.

EMEL MATHLOUTHI: I guess there was a big need for activism inside me. I thought that music was going to be the most direct and powerful way to do it. So I just started… first singing other people’s songs and focusing on performing. Obviously it wasn’t easy to perform this kind of music in the open. I wasn’t getting into music contests or going on TV or the radio. I started performing covers, and I saw the power a guitar and a voice could bring. I would feel that, almost like a revolution was going to start right in front of me. I could see the sparks in people’s eyes. That’s how everything started… a few years before the revolution.

I never like to give myself much credit. But, I do think I definitely played an important part in growing the seeds of revolution. I never had the hope that I would see it with my own eyes.

I started writing my own songs. Eventually, I started writing in my native language, which is Tunisian Arabic. And that’s how I started a new genre, a new style, a mix between metal and folk music. I started paving my way. Ultimately, I had to move to France because I literally didn’t have any hope of a future. I started recording EPs and selling them after the shows until I got noticed. I grew little by little, did more festivals, signed with a record label and released my revolution album, Kelmti Horra.

Tunisia is in the northern part of Africa. It’s a very small country. I think we’re around 12 million people. We’re neighbors with Algeria and Libya. We speak an Arabic dialect that has a lot of different influences, from Turkish to the native language of Tunisia to Arabized French, classical Arabic, Spanish, and Italian. It’s a very interesting melting pot, and I’m very grateful that I was able to grow up there despite growing up under dictatorship. There are a few countries where people take you for who you really are. Like when I go to perform in Turkey, or in Mexico, I feel that people react to what they see, and they engage with what they see, rather than trying to overlay their own idea of who you should be. That happens a lot in Europe, in the white parts of the world.

COLLIS BROWNE: You were on the street with a megaphone, if I hear the story correctly, marching with the people.

EMEL MATHLOUTHI: Yeah, I was on the street a few different times. The Global South has always had a lot of courage. They took it to the street many years before the revolution happened, and that’s how it started at the end of 2010. I took part in the early demonstrations, and I could really see the tension, and I could really see that something was different this time because we were never allowed to protest before that. So, this was a very, very scary but also very exciting time. And then eventually, I went to the street, and I sang. It’s hard for me to describe that moment. I like to take part in things as just a person, but I was asked to sing “Horra,” which I had been singing for a few years. Someone asked me to sing it, and I sang it without realizing how much impact it was going to have. This was a very proud moment. Music can change things, and music is very powerful.

COLLIS BROWNE: I love that. What’s your general sense of how people think about Palestine in Tunisia.

EMEL MATHLOUTHI:

We all grew up with a big love for Palestine. I guess we’ve always seen them as our brothers and sisters, like a part of the family that has always been oppressed.

And let’s be frank about it. I remember when I was young learning that there was a country that was still colonizing another country, and I was living in that reality. I couldn’t believe it. One day, I was talking with my dad, and he said, ‘You know Israel? This is what happened, and this is what is still happening.’ So I think from then on, I was always super angry and fueled by frustration and sadness. We’ve hosted the PLO in Tunisia, so I think the Palestinians like us a lot, because we’ve always been very consistent in our support. There were two terrorist attacks in Tunis where Israeli Secret Services came over the sea, and then, boom, boom, boom… I grew up with a lot of empathy, and I think I have to be grateful for my dad for showing me the white way, for telling me the truth, for growing the seeds of revolution inside me.

I’ve always reacted very vividly to injustice, and specifically Palestine, even before I started to fight for freedom in Tunisia… I was already singing about freedom in Palestine. I used to sing in English. I really hated Arabic, because to me, it represented dictatorship, not only the political side of things, but also in the music. Classic Arabic music said that this is how it’s done. You have to have knowledge. You have to know the maqams. If you didn’t study, you could not… I was coming from, you pick up your guitar, you learn some chords from your friends, and then you go and you use your emotion. Why did I have to function a certain way? Music was inside me. I didn’t need to study it.

And as a woman, I was fed the image of the diva who doesn’t move. There’s a guy who writes lyrics for you, there’s another guy who puts music on it, and there’s 500 guys behind you. You’re singing, and you’re beautiful, because you have the beautiful voice, and then you’re just immobile. I wanted to be barefoot on stage. I wanted to jump and express my body and myself. So to me, Arabic music, and Arabic was just like, No.

I started with metal and rock, and the first song in Arabic that really reconciled me with myself, my culture, obviously, because that had to happen at some point, was a Palestinian song about Palestine. I met this Palestinian friend at some political event, and he said your voice would be amazing in Arabic. And I was like, ‘No way. That’s not true. I have no idea how to sing in Arabic. I have no knowledge.’ He said, ‘I have a song for you.’ He gave me a tape of a song called عصفور طل من الشباك (A bird appeared at my window). I went home and listened to it 1000 times. It told the story of a wounded bird that goes and hides… the story of the Palestinian refugees who find refuge in Lebanon. My connection with Palestine and the Palestinian cause and fight for freedom is intertwined with my music and my purpose.