I follow my desires, and I’m prepared to take the consequences.
Yasmine Hamdan

The Arab world is mediatised in a way that gives too much space to these people – puritans, extremists, whatever you want to call them. There are a lot more people like me in the Middle East than you might think.
Yasmine Hamdan

When I read the Koran or hear it read, the images and the poetry, the sound of the language is very inspiring.
Yasmine Hamdan

There are many positive values that come with a Muslim upbringing. But when religion becomes about rules and hierarchies, when it starts to feel like a prison, I’m not interested.
Yasmine Hamdan

Collaborating with other artists is an emotional thing. Obviously, you don’t do it unless this person inspires you.
Yasmine Hamdan

Without freedom and without humor, our cultures can’t have a healthy evolution.
Yasmine Hamdan

Singing is a very sensual activity! You engage in it with all your senses and your heart.
Yasmine Hamdan

I don’t believe that there is a separation between art and political consciousness.
Yasmine Hamdan

I went from the most underground band in the world to signing with Madonna’s producer and a record label that is extremely mainstream – it was interesting.
Yasmine Hamdan

I wanted to pursue my own thing – I had desires, ideas I wanted to accomplish, and I needed to be on my own for that.
Yasmine Hamdan

Top 10
Yasmine Hamdan
QUOTES
I set the bar very high. I’m very tough on myself.
Yasmine Hamdan

I’ve always had a sense that I am doing something very important, something vital.
Yasmine Hamdan

My dad was a brilliant civil engineer. My parents later divorced, but we lived in Abu Dhabi, Greece, Kuwait.
Yasmine Hamdan

I was born in the middle of Lebanon’s civil war.
Yasmine Hamdan

I was raised by strong women, and the role models I had in music and cinema were strong, too – liberated and provocative.
Yasmine Hamdan

I’m inspired by many artists whose language I don’t understand.
Yasmine Hamdan

I sing in Arabic as a statement. It’s art, and it’s a challenge.
Yasmine Hamdan

It’s complicated for my music to be accepted, even in Lebanon and the Arabic world – I sing in Arabic, but there’s no lute, no classical instruments. Maybe with the Internet opening things up, things will change.
Yasmine Hamdan

I sing ‘Beirut’ for what the city is for me, but I am also singing as an exile.
Yasmine Hamdan

When the public doesn’t understand me, it’s a battle. So when I choose words, I choose them for their musicality, rhythm, and sense, and I choose the right dialect to express that.
Yasmine Hamdan

When I started, I didn’t know how to sing in Arabic – it’s a very complex and sophisticated music full of codes and modes and quarter-tones.
Yasmine Hamdan

I always had this crisis: where do I come from? I was never an insider, never an outsider; I was always in the middle. But it means I never have borders in my head.
Yasmine Hamdan

With Soapkills, we were lucky. We started at a time of transition where things were not ready, nothing was available.
Yasmine Hamdan

Maybe I was blessed that my main drive was purely selfish. I needed to make something, make my life better, wider, have poetry in my life, have something that gives me hope on an everyday basis. That was my main drive all along, really.
Yasmine Hamdan

All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character.
Yasmine Hamdan

Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis, and you have Umm Kulthum.
Yasmine Hamdan

It’s normal; Arab women have always been very active at the forefront of culture – as film producers since the 1920s; as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers for much longer than that.
Yasmine Hamdan

Because of the Lebanese civil war, I had a scattered childhood. I had to build my own connections to each country we moved to.
Yasmine Hamdan

It’s interesting to be at once an insider and outsider. It’s a way of learning how to find your way freely without the need of conforming or belonging.
Yasmine Hamdan

A lot of Arabic composers such as Mohammed Abdel Wahab mixed sounds and instruments from all over the world. It’s important to be able to propose new ways and new sounds without being stigmatised, censored or put aside.
Yasmine Hamdan

There should be no borders, race, colours, or ethnical considerations when it comes to music and creativity.
Yasmine Hamdan

I’m bored, normally, when I travel.
Yasmine Hamdan

Music liberated me.
Yasmine Hamdan

I have learned to create from a hybridized point of view. It’s an asset – something rather liberating.
Yasmine Hamdan

I have a sense of mission in a way. I’ve always worked on being free, as a woman and as an artist.
Yasmine Hamdan

When I imagine feminine characters in my songs, they’re often bold, strong, passionate, militant, witty, sensual, dangerous. I see those characters as skillful witnesses, figures of change and awakening.
Yasmine Hamdan

World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.
Yasmine Hamdan

Yasmine Hamdan Music Quotes
When I go to Beirut, I don’t drive. It’s traumatizing to drive there.
Yasmine Hamdan

Change means resistance, and resistance means transformation and igniting energies.
Yasmine Hamdan

I had the urge to face my own limitation, and I needed to be bigger. I needed to be more professional and be in a more competitive environment because I wanted to grow as an artist. That’s why I went to Europe.
Yasmine Hamdan

You do not start by working on society; you start by yourself to be a freer person and a more independent person.
Yasmine Hamdan

Every time I go to Beirut, I see people and the quality of life going slowly from bad to worse, and from worse to even worse.
Yasmine Hamdan

Faith is a very intimate process that involves being sincere and truthful to a spiritual presence.
Yasmine Hamdan

Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say – Kate Bush and Radiohead – and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.
Yasmine Hamdan

I’m Muslim but not really. My family did not care. And I always managed to skip religion classes when I was living in the Gulf, even when they were obligatory.
Yasmine Hamdan

I had an Arabic background. but I lived a very scattered childhood. I didn’t belong to any one culture, which meant I didn’t have musical geographies in my head.
Yasmine Hamdan

The Arabic world was very interesting in the 1920s to ’60s: there was something booming culturally, and I found my culture very desirable when I listened to these songs.
Yasmine Hamdan

The Arabic music I listen to is extremely edgy. Ironic, sarcastic, sensual, erotic.
Yasmine Hamdan

If you have a drummer who alternates between fast and slow drumming, it can negatively affect the music.
Yasmine Hamdan

‘Al Jamilat’ is not just feminist. It’s an album with songs that feature women: women who are in love, rebellious women, political activists, women who are more submissive, women who are in charge.
Yasmine Hamdan

Women are a minority the same way gay people are.
Yasmine Hamdan

I’ve always fought any form of censorship.
Yasmine Hamdan

When I started doing music, it was out of despair and boredom. I got passionate about it, and I felt that it allowed me to become somebody: an artist who explores her different identities.
Yasmine Hamdan

For me, a taxi is like a public space because so many people get in that space.
Yasmine Hamdan

We all have femininity in us.
Yasmine Hamdan

As an artist, you need to be true to yourself and free and not put yourself in a box that contradicts with what you feel is needed for a song.
Yasmine Hamdan

There is something spiritual about art that connects us with ourselves and with others; it’s really about coming together and creating bridges.
Yasmine Hamdan

I am interested in exploring encounters where worlds meet and not where they separate.
Yasmine Hamdan

I think our societies – to certain extent, of course, and to different degrees, but almost with no exception – have always been struggling to come to terms with archaic traditions.
Yasmine Hamdan

When it comes to the lyrics, I write about my own perception of things and use characters for that.
Yasmine Hamdan

My father is an engineer, and my mother raised the three children.
Yasmine Hamdan

I studied psychology at university.
Yasmine Hamdan

I love Khaliji music; it’s very inspiring.
Yasmine Hamdan

I met Jim Jarmusch when I started recording my album ‘Ya Nass.’ He was writing the script for ‘Only Lovers Left Alive.’ Jarmusch was always a great inspiration to me, way before meeting him. Working with him was fantastic.
Yasmine Hamdan

I don’t think there is only one Arab culture or a pure Arabness. We are very multiple, especially our generation, which is very multilayered.
Yasmine Hamdan

My family played a part in bringing communism to Lebanon.
Yasmine Hamdan

I don’t relate to what is seen as ‘Arab culture.’ I relate to what I explore myself, what is around me.
Yasmine Hamdan

Egyptians are quite incredible people. They have everything: the culture, the music, the scenes. So much of Arab music and art started there.
Yasmine Hamdan