Lebanese Artist Dana Hourani Grounds Her Music in Vulnerability
Lebanese Artist Dana Hourani Grounds Her Music in Vulnerability
The 'Ana' singer talks about reimagining nostalgic Arabic songs and sharing acoustic renditions of her music.
An unreleased Dana Hourani album exists, but the world will never hear it.
The Lebanese artist and producer, speaking from her home in Dubai via Zoom, bashfully explains that this was her first try at recording an album, an English-language one which she did when she was 16 years old.
Perched up in her seat, Hourani adamantly but jokingly stresses that this album will never see the light of day.
“If there was something that would end me and my career, that would be it,” she says in jest.
Fast forward to today, and the likelihood of such a career-ending album feels ever-distant for an artist that has continued to push the boundaries of Arab pop and currently reigns over the summer with her hit song “Ana”.
The original, a pan-Arab collaboration with Algerian rapper Anas and Tunisian rapper NORDO, features a soft, tropical melody with an upbeat tempo that feels tailor-made for the beach.
Its remix, a complete rework with Colombian rapper Deny K, sees the song fuse together Spanish and Arabic and has since gone on to achieve broader success and appeal, charting not only in the Middle East and North Africa but in Latin American countries like Panama as well.
“Why not,” Hourani says of an Arab-Latino collaboration and tapping into a new audience for her music. “Tapping into a different market and hearing the song from someone else's perspective as well. That would be pretty cool, actually. I was just thinking, why not?”
The 37-year-old Hourani has quickly become a mainstay in the indie scene in the Middle East and North Africa, and has positioned herself on the forefront of emerging artists ushering in a new and refreshing era of Arab pop.
Known for weaving her silky, delicate vocals through melodic production that often features acoustic instruments, Hourani commands an ability to convey complex feelings in ways that feel accessible and relatable to her listeners.
The ethereal vibe that Hourani brings makes listeners feel like gravity is nonexistent as they float through her music in a celestial state.
Born in Sharjah, UAE and raised in Beirut, Hourani first fell in love with music in large part due to her uncle, a seasoned artist himself who would constantly play the guitar around the family and even traveled with his guitar.
A 12-year-old Hourani, curious at the time to learn more about her uncle’s passion and artistry, learned how to play different chords from him before purchasing a guitar of her own to play and write her own music.
As a teenager, Hourani stayed active playing the guitar as part of music clubs and performed at American University of Beirut (AUB) Outdoors, an annual event at the university showcasing student and faculty theater, music, and performative art.
Despite this initial trajectory toward an artistic career, Hourani stopped performing after graduating college and instead worked a corporate job at a music distribution company in Dubai.
“You never really think you're actually going to get into something like that professionally,” Hourani candidly shares about her thought process at the time. “It just seems so farfetched.”
That being said, to confine any artist to a “typical office job” is to slowly break their sense of purpose and chip away at the core of what makes them human: their innate ability to express emotions creatively.
After working in distribution for eight years, Hourani felt her talent was slowly being wasted away and longed to get back into performing and creating music.
The singer first created a public Instagram account to post fashion content, racking up brand collaborations and building her status as an influencer.
With the encouragement of a friend—who later would become her manager—Hourani vulnerably posted her first video showcasing her vocal talents, performing a cover of “2002” by Anne-Marie.
Yet even with the high engagement and the positive feedback from her followers, Hourani stresses that she felt hesitant and anxious posting this video for the public to see.
“I'm always afraid to put myself out there, believe it or not,” she says. “I mean, it's not easy. I don't know. I get that for a lot of artists, it's easy for them, but for me, it was never an easy thing.”
Hourani continued sharing covers of other artists and songs before ultimately posting videos of her performing her own original music—and eventually moving from singing in English to singing in Arabic.
That intentional decision came after multiple conversations with her team, and Hourani feeling that there was “so much that's untapped in Arabic” and found the language “so much more poetic” in conveying certain sentiments that could not be expressed as easily in English.
Her first studio single, the 2019 ballad “Ella Enta”, showcases a wistful piano with Hourani’s melancholic, mournful voice drifting through the melody as she sings softly about love and loss.
But it was her reinterpretations of classic Arabic music, the nostalgic Fairuz song “Zuruni” and Nancy Ajram’s 2003 pop hit “Yay”, that garnered Hourani widespread regional attention.
And while her rendition of “Zuruni” was the result of a well-thought strategy to remake an iconic song, “Yay” was not supposed to be more than a 30-second cover on Instagram.
Sleiman Damien, a powerhouse producer in Arabic pop music and a frequent collaborator with Hourani, insisted that this rendition become something much larger than simply an Instagram post and even agreed to produce the song for free.
Choosing to reinterpret a song that still remains in the public consciousness and carries so much nostalgic weight—by an iconic pop artist, no less—comes with heavy risk.
The cover was met with mixed reactions from listeners, and it took some time for Hourani to process these opinions.
“I didn't feel so good about that one until much later on when the whole release passed and it was just a song, not tied to a release and not tied to my brand and my image and all of that,” Hourani recalls. “I came to realize at the end of the day, I'm doing something that's so experimental that obviously not everyone is going to like it. The most important thing for me is to do something that aligns with what I'm here to do anyways, to offer something maybe a new sound, something that's experimental but aligns with my sound as well.”
This creative vulnerability, despite the anxiety it may give Hourani, comes naturally to her and in her music.
For many of the songs she has released, Hourani has been intentional in also sharing an acoustic or stripped-down version of those songs as well.
The pop hit “InshAllah Kheir”, a bouncy, upbeat song released in July 2023 that invokes retrospection and finding inner-peace during life’s monumental moments, saw a complete reinterpretation in its acoustic rendition that came a month later.
In fact, Hourani says those stripped-down versions are “at the core” of her music and her artistry.
“If I were to describe my artistry as Dana, when I was a teenager, playing music in my bedroom with nobody else, I feel like I would relate the second version of the songs. I always like to release an unproduced version of a song that's a bit more raw because I feel like that also is a big part of me and a big part of why I got into music.”
The very essence of Dana, through her music and otherwise, is to be a human trying to make it in this world, sharing the same vulnerabilities and anxieties that many have in trying to function in this world.
That grounded approach stems from life experiences, observing the music industry from multiple facets, and being a mother.
“I have a family, and I have a daughter, and I have a lifestyle that I have to abide by,” Hourani steadfastly says. “This is what my life is. That helps me stay grounded a lot and takes me away from getting so immersed in the industry too much. A lot of the times, I don't see myself as an artist. I see myself as a housewife, a mom, whatever, regular.”