Rahawan

Born in Nazareth and resident in Haifa where she practises as an architect, the 30-year-old Zaatry is also a singer-songwriter who six years ago co-founded a community-based project to support the underground Palestinian music scene. Her solo album is an ambitious concept that takes its name from her great-great grandmother Nazira Rahawan, the last member of her family ‘able to roam this land free.’

Recorded at a studio in the occupied Golan Heights, the album features nine thoughtful and reflective songs sung in a beguiling voice that can do sultry or soulful and soaring or haunting in equal measure. Zaatry takes the memory of that lost freedom, which she never had the chance to experience, and weaves a narrative that embraces the personal and the political to create a tribute to generations of Palestinian mothers and matriarchs. Musically Zaatry combines Western folk-rock influences and Arabic inflections so that her press release suggesting a cross between Souad Massi and Joni Mitchell isn’t that wide of the mark. The songs are full of the sorrow, loss and oppression that is the everyday lot of the Palestinians in the occupied territories – and yet she imbues with the eternal hope that the resilience of the human spirit will prevail.