Tag: palestine

Spotify Extends Existing Partnership With UNICEF and Donates to UNICEF’s Global Emergency Fund

October 18, 2023

Spotify is deeply saddened by the recent terrorist attacks in Israel and troubled by the growing catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Our hearts are with all of the people caught in the conflict. We acknowledge the important work of UNICEF and its partners, who are doing all they can to help the most affected children and their families.

In June, Spotify announced our three-year partnership with UNICEF to help ensure that young people, including refugees, displaced people, and migrants, can access evidence-based and engaging mental health audio content on Spotify. The initial partnership was focused on helping young people affected by the war in Ukraine, with a long-term goal to extend our work globally both in and outside of times of emergency. 

We are extending this partnership for another two years to continue supporting UNICEF in reaching children and young people exposed to conflict and natural disasters by providing them with tools to promote mental health and well-being.

Spotify is also making a donation to UNICEF’s Global Emergency Fund to help UNICEF and its partners provide immediate humanitarian support—including medical supplies, fuel, mental health—and psychosocial support in response to the conflict.

Finally, we’re matching employee donations to support additional funds for UNICEF’s global humanitarian efforts. We hope that those in harm’s way find peace and safety soon.

Palestinian Canadian Pop Star Nemahsis Brings Her Vulnerable and Healing Pop to ‘CAN You Hear Me’

July 7, 2023

Nemahsis Cover

We’re back again celebrating Canadian artistry with CAN You Hear Me, a series championing the music, unique talent, and diverse cultures found in the Great White North—from the jazz bars in Québec to the dance clubs in Ontario, all the way to the powwows in the west.

Our latest featured artist is Nemah Hasan, known better by her fans as Nemahsis. The 29-year-old Palestinian Canadian pop musician garners global attention with every move she makes, with her previous work as a fashion and beauty influencer and her hauntingly beautiful and relatable music.

Hailing from Milton, Ontario, Nemahsis first found her following online with her single “what if i took it off for you?,” a biting song that sparked a conversation within the Muslim community and encouraged women to talk about their personal relationships with the hijab. Her 2022 debut EP, eleven achers, named after the farm she grew up on back in Milton, is filled with minimalist yet lush folk-futurist ballads addressing topics such as immigration and depression. 

Moving ahead with singles such as this year’s “i wanna be your right hand,” Nemahsis is showing signs of shifting in a whole new direction with her music.

For the Record sat down with Nemahsis to talk about finding her sound, her new direction, and who her favorite Canadian artists are.

Tell me about your journey into making music.

I started making music in late 2017, and at that time I was working a lot, sometimes even taking on three jobs at a time while also freelancing. At the time, being a music artist wasn’t even an option for me. I come from an immigrant family, so there was always this pressure to have a “real” job. But once I got into my mid-20s I felt that I had proved to my family that I could keep a job, make a sustainable income, and can always come back to that if music didn’t work out.

So I wrote my first song, “what if I took it off for you?,” and quit my job two weeks later. But honestly, I didn’t actually like the song. I kept listening to albums like Sam Smith’s The Lonely Hour and Adele’s 25 and felt like their songs were all hits and sounded nothing like mine.

So music was put on the backburner while I continued to freelance, and I didn’t take it seriously until the pandemic hit, where I wrote my EP, eleven achers.

How would you describe your sound? How has it evolved since you first started writing and performing?

When I discovered that first level of Nemahsis, the sound was very stripped back, minimalist, and almost feminine and dainty, but with lyrics that touched on a lot of heavy topics. Whereas my new sound feels like kind of a reversal, where the lyrics are more poetic and more relatable, but the production and tone of voice play around in discomfort.

But regardless, I feel like there’s room for me in the pop world so long as I’m making a difference in history, and I’d love to see if I get as much recognition and appreciation by being relatable and trying to fit into the same world as Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. I’m an artist of analytics and data, and I’d just love to see if I’m appreciated as an artist if I’m not writing music that could be tokenized by the wrong demographic. It’s exciting, but also a challenge.

What has reception for your music been like in Canada from the Palestinian and wider Muslim communities? How about from white communities?

Honestly, it’s very weird. I feel like the Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities have known about me for quite a few years and that I was seen and recognized as an artist before the rest of Canada and the world had acknowledged me as one. But I feel like my music and career have sustained because of all the new people that have joined throughout Canada that don’t look like me.

What message do you hope listeners will take away from your music?

That there’s no point in trying to be the best in every single situation. You don’t have to be the prettiest, coolest, or the funniest one in the room all the time. For so much of my life I felt like I had to dance, doing the most to stand out so I could be accepted. Whereas now I just think there’s so much room for not having to be like that.  

How has Spotify for Artist tools helped you?

I actually navigated my last tour with Spotify Artist tools. My manager and I would just go through the analytics and make decisions on what to hold off on and what to do. It’s funny, when it comes to my songwriting, I’m very free-spirited with no real strategy, but when it comes to using Artist tools, I become very analytical and strategic.

Who are some fellow Canadian artists that have inspired you? How about other Arab or Palestinian artists living in the diaspora?

Oh my gosh, there are so many. I love Nelly Furtado. I think she’s so good that I even forget that she’s Canadian, and the impact she’s had on us all has been enormous. I also love Joni Mitchell.

And of course, Céline Dion! I always say that she’s like the Coca-Cola of music in that no matter where you go, Ethiopia, Jordan, Palestine, or China, everybody knows “My Heart Will Go On.” They know what movie it comes from, who sang it, and they’ll even belt it out word for word. There’s a lot of power in being an artist like that.

Outside of Canada, Yuna is a big one that I’d like to mention. When I was in grade 10 back in 2011, she had just released “Decorate,” and I emailed her to tell her that I thought what she was doing was great, and the fact that there was a woman singing in a hijab in pop music blew my mind. She later emailed me back with a lot of encouraging words, and honestly, I wouldn’t be where I am if it wasn’t for that email.

Start listening to the sound of Nemahsis with her eleven achers EP.

Netflix and Mo Amer’s “MO” Crosses Cultures With Comedy, Care, and Music

September 14, 2022

Mo Amer sitting in a car and looking out the open window

When Mo Amer set out to make a comedy TV series about his experience as a Palestinian refugee in Texas, he wished to represent his family and his culture in a way that he had never seen done before on mainstream U.S. television. In the process of doing just that, he also created a musical love letter to the Houston suburb of Alief and to everyone who has ever had to leave home.  

In the Netflix show MO, which debuted last month, the titular character straddles the line between two cultures, three languages, and a pending asylum request while hustling to support his Palestinian family. He navigates the stereotypes and intricacies of a story of displacement with both the sensitivity and humor befitting his stand-up comedy career. 

Accompanying the show is the MO Official Playlist, which amplifies the series’ multicultural and multifaceted themes. It features artists from Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora such as Chilean-Palestinian singer and Spotify RADAR–featured artist Elyanna, and DAM, the first Palestinian hip-hop group. It also incorporates a track from Palestinian American Sammy Shiblaq. Also, highlighted: hip-hop luminary Common, chopped and screwed originator DJ Screw, and regional Mexican duo Los 2 de la S.

“All of the songs that are on there, they are Mo,” Suhel Nafar, the show’s music supervisor, told For the Record in a co-interview with Mo. “If there’s an app one day where people walk and they have a soundtrack all the time around them, that would be this playlist for Mo.” 

Why was it important for you to tell this story—your family’s story? 

Mo: I’ve never seen, first of all, a Palestinian family on American television—nor have I seen an immigrant refugee story ever told in this perspective, from something as grounded in comedy. We have this idea of what a refugee, an immigrant, looks like based on the mainstream news, which is people on boats, fleeing. But we never get the details, the story of what happens after. If you actually survive and get to a new country to explore a new life, you don’t ever really see what the struggles look like there. There’s so much effort that goes into it, not just to survive, but to adjust to a completely different structure, to try to feel seen and to feel like an equal to the person next to you. 

I was really meticulous with this. It’s really, really important not to be over the top with anything. But it’s just like cooking a dish. It has to have the right balance of heat, sweetness, texture—this is the same kind of thing that goes into making a TV show. I wasn’t going to let anything slip by. And it was such an important story that’s never been done before in American television. And it’s such a huge responsibility, such a weight on my shoulders. And I take that very, very seriously. 

What were the types of music you considered for the soundtrack of this show?

Mo: Well, it’s something that I had to dig into myself, since a lot of the show is based off of my life story and grounded in that. What do I listen to? What does my playlist look like? I’m a little bit Palestinian folk music, a little modern Arabic music, but also a lot of hip-hop, a lot of chopped and screwed—I’m from Houston. I am a little bit jazz. I’m a little bit rock and roll, but I’m a little bit country. Suhel and I share the same cultural backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds, and he understood that I had so much to carry that I needed someone that I can just trust in my corner that knows me so well. 

Suhel: It’s definitely a match as I’m also from a Palestinian background; I was born and raised in Palestine and immigrated to the U.S. nine years ago. Hearing Mo’s story, that he learned English through comedy, resonated, as I’m a person that learned English through hip-hop music. So we really found this matching in our stories. For me, it wasn’t just curating for Mo, it’s for everyone who’s going to feel attached to Mo. So the soundtrack represents Black culture in Texas with hip-hop and chopped and screwed, Latin culture with regional Mexican, and Arab culture with traditional hip-hop and Arabic Pop. And if I want to go back to food—because we both love food—the way I would see it, it’s like a food truck in the U.S. that would be selling al pastor. So it looks like shawarma wrapped in a tortilla—and that’s the sound.

We also incorporated some producers like Idrissi and Ramoon, who are really dope producers from Morocco that have produced for people globally. Having that sound in there was really important. Discovery was important as well—we really wanted this to be an opportunity to not just put the big names, not just put the traditional stuff, but also put the new and upcoming artists to get people to go to Spotify, to search for that song after watching. 

Hip-hop may differ across languages and cultures, but so many elements of it remain consistent. What is the power and impact of hip-hop to you? 

Mo: Hip-hop, to me, is the voice of a struggle, the voice of overcoming struggle, and the idea of coming from nothing and assessing your environment, being honest and true to it. It’s poetry as well when it’s done the right way. It has a lot of depth and it’s so layered and sophisticated when done right. And it’s something that I just clung to when I was a kid. And then when chopped and screwed started making its sound in Houston, I was just blown away by it, because once it has a particular melody as it slows down, it puts you in a completely different state. It just slowed down everything in a really special way. So I have a lot of admiration for hip-hop and what it is and what it stands for.

Why do you think non-Palestinians or non-Arabs should experience this show? 

Suhel: The character of Mo in the show, a lot of it, about 90 percent, is what he’s like outside the show too. And what he’s representing—it’s not Arab culture. It’s not Houson culture. It’s not Latino culture or Nigerian culture. It’s a third culture. 

You know, when immigrants or refugee immigrants move to a new place in the world and all those cultures start mixing up, it creates a new culture. It’s the third culture. This is what we call it here, in the diaspora. So you could be a Latino and feel like Mo represents you because you’re feeling that experience of being from a different land. And this third culture concept is what blurs the differences between all of us. And that’s what’s beautiful about Mo in his comedy, in his show, in his storytelling, and in his choices of who he works with in front of the screen and behind the scenes. 

Fall in love with MO through the show’s official playlist, only on Spotify.