For Zeyne, Music is Rooted in Authentic Representation of Identity
The Palestinian-Jordanian singer-songwriter shares her personal connection to dabke and what it means to be an artist in times of crisis.
In the opening minute for her song “Bali”, viewers see a melancholic Zeyne looking out to the ocean before quickly cutting to a shot of her sitting alone in a large empty room.
The black and white nature of the video projects a brooding air of reflection and seriousness as a somber piano softly drives the melody.
The Palestinian-Jordanian artist herself adds to the weight of this song, looking wistfully into the camera, her eyes piercing with heartbreak and sorrow.
“Never did I think, my love, that my fate was beyond and above. Choices not mine, destiny flows. Changing my path without knowing,” Zeyne mournfully sings.
“Bali”, released in June, is the first song written by the artist since the humanitarian crisis in Gaza first began.
Over 38,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October, and an additional 10,000 are believed to be buried deep under the rubble of the destruction caused by Israel.
For Zeyne, watching everything unfold in real-time has left a profound sense of trauma and grief deeply embedded in her artistry.
She admits that it took her some time before she could get back to writing music.
“When I decided to channel all of these feelings about not being able to write and what I've been going through and what we've been going through collectively, that's how I wrote ‘Bali’ my first song after that break,” Zeyne shares candidly over Zoom from Amman where she lives. “It just talks about the mental state that we've been all going through and how that has personally affected each and every one of us.”
The 26-year-old singer has quickly become one of the faces of the emerging Arabic music scene, authentically pushing pop and R&B to new levels with her own Palestinian flair and in a way that honors the musicians and singers that came before her.
And she has done so without having yet released a studio album.
Zeyne prides herself in resonating with listeners not just living in the Middle East and North Africa, but also in diaspora communities in Europe and the United States.
In February, Zeyne debuted her tenth single “Ma Bansak” at the coveted COLORS Studio, an R&B-influenced track where she longs for her lover.
While she felt excited for achieving this career milestone, the singer could not help but think of her people in Palestine.
With the backdrop of Gaza, Zeyne has come to the realization that being an artist means something different for her now.
“I definitely think it is a responsibility of an artist to reflect the times that we're going through, for sure,” Zeyne says. “But for me, talking or singing about Palestine didn't just start now. I've been brought up in a household that loves music with parents who are core Palestinian.”
The musical influences range anywhere from South African jazz—from her father, who traveled often to South Africa for work—to 90s R&B and hip-hop—from her older siblings who shared their love of artists like Lauryn Hill and Destiny’s Child with their youngest sister.
Zeyne credits her mother, who managed a Palestinian dabke troupe for over 20 years, for exposing her to the traditional folkloric music of her homeland.
In fact, the singer herself had been part of dabke troupe up until very recently, starting when she was five-years-old.
Though as a child in West Amman, when Zeyne calls a “bubble” in the city, she felt that her mind was “colonized by Western ideologies and influences”, thus keeping her dabke skills a secret with her friends until she became a teenager.
“I remember being nervous,” she recalls about opening up to her friends. “When I decided to tell them built the courage to do so, my friends were like, ‘Oh, that's so cool.’
The energy that dabke brings, with booming rhythmic drums imploring anyone remotely in the vicinity to join in the circle dance, coupled with the personal history for Zeyne, has new meaning for the artist as she works on her first-ever dabke song.
“I feel making this track, I swear to God, it felt healing for me because to me, incorporating dabke into my own music is a statement. This is who I am.”
Artistic performance has been deeply ingrained in the singer’s DNA. As an accomplished student of piano and theater, Zeyne acutely understood the power of audience engagement and stage presence at a young age.
As she leaned more into singing and developing her vocals, Zeyne quickly shouts out her longtime collaborator, producer and songwriter Nasir Al Bashir, for pushing her to write her own music and start to move away from only singing covers.
Al Bashir, who has worked with artists like Palestinian singers Lina Makoul and Dana Salah, and Zeyne first met in the studio in 2019.
Zeyne, for whom it was her first time recording in a proper studio, had come prepared to perform a cover when Al Bashir asked her a simple question: Why are you here?
On its surface, that may seem fairly trivial. For Zeyne, she recalls being quite perplexed by the question.
“I found it so weird that he was asking me why I was here. I just want to record this,” she says with a chuckle.
That question, though, led to the singer writing and ultimately releasing her first original song, “Minni Ana”, a bouncy Daniel Caesar-inspired R&B slow jam.
Just a few months after, Zeyne and Al Bashir collaborated again on her third single “Nostalgia”, living up to its name with an infectious 90s rhythm akin to Brandy at her peak.
The song garnered swift and widespread attention in the Arabic music scene, firmly putting Zeyne as one of the up-and-coming faces of a new generation of artists.
Since that time, the singer has remained a steady constant in an ever-growing scene of artists looking to make waves in the Middle East, North Africa, and Arab diaspora communities worldwide.
Zeyne believes the global spread of this new wave ultimately benefits Arabic music.
“Regardless of whether you think it's good or bad music, the growth of Arabic music is a good thing for us as a scene in general because it solidifies the sound more and more,” she emphasizes.
“Personally, I'm really into the projects and the artists right now that are coming up with music that have strong messages behind them,” Zeyne continues, shouting out fellow Palestinian artists Saint Levant and Nemahsis. “The authenticity really speaks to me. I don't look at the projects and be like, ‘oh, that's such a cool song.’ The ones that speak to me are the ones that I feel like are literally coming from the heart.”
Zeyne herself proves to be one of those artists, weaving her own humanity throughout her music and her interactions with peers and fans alike.
The singer remains incredibly vocal on her social platforms on the atrocities in Gaza, getting shadow-banned in the process.
Choosing not to be silent, Zeyne says, was not a difficult decision for her.
“I can't comprehend representing Palestine in my music—in who I am and how I talk—but not being a voice for what's happening in Palestine,” Zeyne adamantly conveys. “It would be very wrong of me to separate the human element of my art because I don't think that's right at all.”
Musically, Zeyne continues to incorporate every aspect of her identity into her songwriting, production, and performances.
As she gears up for her debut album, the artist vulnerably reflects on a comment about her transformative COLORS Studio session.
“The morning after I posted the performance, I was reading the comments in bed and I was crying,” Zeyne shares, overcome with emotion. “My mom came in asking, ‘Why are you crying?’ I was like, ‘How can I not cry when someone tells me, You are our ancestor's dream. I'm proud of you.’ I just remember journaling that day and writing everything I felt because I didn't want to forget that feeling ever. I love music and I love sharing my stories and I love building a community and I love making people feel like they're not alone.”