The 22-year-old musician discusses sampling her grandfather, collaborating across cultures, and taking pride in her artistry on the latest episode of Rolling Stone's On Your Radar
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00:00 I'm just so grateful for Coachella as a festival for giving us an opportunity
00:06 because being there and being the first Arabic artist to sing in Arabic in Coachella, full set,
00:12 means a lot. It's a big deal. It's not only for me and my career, it's also for my culture and my people.
00:17 Hi guys, it's Eliana and this is On Your Radar.
00:19 So I was born and raised in Nazareth, Palestine. I'm also partially Chilean,
00:27 so I feel like I take my influence from my background and my culture. I feel like the
00:33 twist is that I used to listen to a lot of jazz and I used to sing a lot of jazz, but yet my
00:37 parents would always listen to authentic Arabic songs. It's a mix of all these things that I grew
00:41 up around and things that inspired me when I was younger. It's just how I feel. I always loved
00:47 singing. It started when I was just around like seven. I used to sing all the time in my mom's
00:52 room. She had a big mirror. I would always just put on her clothes and glam and everything and
00:58 just perform. Sometimes I would have headphones as my in-ears, you know, full-on performance.
01:03 That song is a very special song for me. First of all, we sampled my grandpa. My grandpa used
01:10 to be a poet, but they used to do Zajal. Zajal is when they do a freestyle in weddings
01:15 and they start going back and forth with lines, which is so cool, but yet it's so poetic.
01:22 It's so genius. We sampled my grandpa in that song. That song is very special because
01:27 I feel like I'm speaking to my hometown and my people. I feel like it was such a beautiful thing
01:34 to use the fabric in it. I'm just saying sad and pallid because we wrote that song, me and my
01:40 brother, when we were in Palestine. We felt sad, sad and pallid. It's a special song. I wanted to
01:48 create something special for it, something artistic, something that even if you don't
01:52 understand what I'm saying, but you can still feel me and feel what I'm saying. All inspirations from
01:58 all around the world, they have to come from something. They have to come from a background.
02:01 Just each person embracing that brings the best out of them. When you're trying to run away
02:06 from the things that make you who you are is when you lose your identity. I like to, you know, always
02:12 stick to my culture. Me and my sister always work on, you know, getting the looks together and we
02:18 always try to, you know, find something unique to add because I mean our culture is so beautiful
02:23 and unique and you got a lot of cool things that we can, you know, include in fashion right now,
02:29 like an Ileana world. You know, it's a lot of coins, a lot of, you know, Arabic, Middle Eastern
02:36 sounds, a lot of Mijwes, which is an Arabic synth. As long as you embrace who you are and where you
02:42 come from, that will make you shine the most. I actually, I was never in dance classes. I was
02:49 never a dancer, but I loved dancing. I knew that I loved dancing. I knew that I could dance. I just
02:55 loved being in front of the mirror and I would just love to dance and create and I have such an
03:00 idea when it comes to performing because I love watching artists perform and I love seeing their
03:06 choreography. It always made me connect to the music so much more. When I create music, I'm
03:11 always also thinking of the movements that I could do for the music. So, I work with my choreographer.
03:15 She's from Japan. Her name is Enatsuki. I just love creating with her because she brings her culture
03:20 and I bring my culture and we make them to like one thing, which is super interesting and I always
03:26 sense how much we have a lot of like Japanese sharp choreography and yet we have that soft,
03:34 sensual, billy dance feeling. So, I just love that combination. Billy dancing is very, very soft and
03:42 very hot and like super chill. I love seeing my girls. They don't know what I'm saying. They don't
03:48 know the billy dancing world, but we're just teaching each other things and I just love
03:51 learning from them. They love learning from me and we just make it as one thing. Like, when you're on
03:56 stage, you should just be in a music video and it's so true because I feel like sometimes you
04:02 just have to be in that. It's like it's a camera. Just focus on that and I think that that gives
04:09 such a nice feeling for everybody there. You know, it's not only about the music, but it's about the
04:13 vision. I like to have 10 minutes of like peace. I like to warm up my voice a little. I call my mom.
04:22 We pray together and I just love to surround myself with people that I really like because I
04:29 need to feel that. I need to feel safe. I need to feel good and then I just, you know, go on stage
04:34 and be a completely different person. For me as an artist, my power is to create art and to, you
04:41 know, perform and be out there and making sure that I spread my message with love and peace and I want
04:49 to make sure I keep doing that. That's why I just love being there and being on stage and sharing
04:55 that moment with the crowd because it's very unique and I just love seeing them and meeting
05:00 them after the show. They always give me the most beautiful gifts. It'll be bracelets or beautiful
05:05 paintings that they did. It's just so cool. It's special. I'm building like a very special bond
05:09 with my fans and my people, so it feels very special. It's a very unique album. It's very
05:15 risky and it's very out there. It's not very safe. It has multiple different styles and they're all
05:24 combined in one and it's like, I feel like it's like a piece of art. I feel like it represents
05:29 me a lot. Like I only had two EPs in my life ever out, so this is the first album and it's my first
05:34 album, so it's like my little cute baby and I have to, you know, I've never felt like I have an album
05:41 that represents me as much as this one. I've been through it in this album, good and the bad. It was
05:46 very inspiring to write it. I took my time to write it. It's two years to write it and get it where I
05:51 wanted to be because I just wanted to have that unique sound with the, you know, the daf, which is
05:58 the tambourine, with like a lot of mejwes, which is the Arabic synth. You hear a lot of, you know,
06:04 cultural things and mawal, which is a way to sing for like Arabic people. It's like mawal, it's like
06:09 a soulful way to sing with no timing, with like poetic lyrics. This album is just so exciting. I
06:16 can't wait to put it out and, you know, just see how people react to it. When I create something,
06:21 I don't want to think of all the things that would distract an artist. I like to think of the,
06:26 the how authentic the album is and how beautiful it is. It means a lot to me and
06:30 I hope it changes something in the sound and for the Arabs and for Americans. I feel like
06:36 a lot of people come to me and it's like to them it's deeper than music and it's deeper than an
06:41 artist. It feels like a movement at this point and that's what I want to keep pushing. I want
06:46 it to feel like a movement and, you know, it's time for us to prove ourselves and to be on all
06:53 the big platforms and to be heard. When you're an artist, it's a commitment and you have to make
06:57 sure that you take care of all the things and all the sides. You're representing your art and you
07:01 have to make sure that it's true to you so people believe in it.
07:05 Um, yeah.
07:07 (whooshing)