Interview with Natacha Atlas

Your music is a combination between traditional melodies and European modern technology. Where is the balance between traditional music and modern music?

I think it depends on who are playing with you and how much freedom they have. I'm very lucky because I've a great Egyptian keyboard player, a Tunisian violin player and a Moroccan percussionist, I've got three very good traditional players with me and three European musicians too, so I think we are actually balanced... 

Let's talk about your latest album "Ayestheni". Do you agree that is more close to Arabic tradition than the previous "Gedida"? I know today you're living in Cairo, so maybe you're more interested in increasing your roots.

Yes, I want to increase my roots, but not because I'm going to stay in this direction. I like to go back and forward. Now I'm getting more deep into the Arabic tradition but next time I'll go on the other way: it will be still Oriental-based, but with many differences. I like to constantly change, otherwise it becomes all stereotype.

Can you tell me something about your next album?

I've just finished recording it in Rome in the studio Albini. It was engineered by Luca Proietti who played with Costantino Albini as well It's a new age album, anyway. Oriental new age. Most of the songs are by myself, one is also with my husband Abdallah who's an Arabic musician. The title of the album is "Foretold in the language of dreams". It's very esoteric, very calm, with many sounds from nature and philosophical phrases. It will be out in the beginning of next year.

Have you experienced new musical contaminations?

Yes, there are some influences from India and it sounds quite psychedelic as well. Besides, it's more classical than the previous ones and there are no pop songs at all.

Is it true that you started playing psychedelic rock in your beginnings and than you moved towards folk music?

I did a couple of songs in that style with the group I had at that time, but it wasn't anything serious. It was a little bit distorted and exaggerated: it was just an experiment.

Can you define yourself like a traditional or modern singer?

I can't define myself a traditional player because I'm not in the field of doing traditional music 100%. I would call myself a contemporary-traditional singer or maybe a contemporary classical composer, especially for the next album. I like to move around the areas.

How did you find working with Franco Battiato in his latest album "Ferro Battuto"?

He's actually a very nice guy and he has a lot of good ideas, I like the way he uses philosophy in his music. It's very easy to work with him. Maybe we'll collaborate together again. 

You also collaborated with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. How did you find working with them?

They're actually very nice people, a very good musicians especially interested in Oriental music. They aren't arrogant and loud as they could seem when they were young. Now they want peace and tranquillity. They seem to be very peaceful people. 

What other collaborations in your future?

I've already collaborated with Jocelyn Pook, a British woman classical composer. 

Many people consider you as "the Queen of Arabic music". Do you feel the pressure and the responsibility of it?

Yes, I think it's a pressure and I'm not sure it suits me...

But one time you defined yourself as "a human Gaza Strip".

Yes. We do a lot of things when we are young. I was young and confused about a lot of things.

Do you still live in Cairo?

I lived in Cairo until few months ago. Now I'm back in Europe for a while. I've to stay in London for some festivals and because my record company is in England.

How do you choose the covers in your albums? I guess you especially like the French chansonnier, considered you covered "Me Ne Quitte Pas" of Jacques Brel in "Ayestheni" and Francoise Hardy's "Mon Amie La Rose" in "Gedida".

Yes, but generally I try to find songs with really good words and good melodies. That's all.

You use to sing European and American songs but you translate these songs in your culture and your language. Isn't it so?

Yes, this would my plan. I like to take a song and translate in my culture, transforming it completely.

In your records there are also many elements of dub music.

Yes, I've always been very influenced by dub music, there's a lot of space in it, so it's easy to work with.

Do you like some contemporary pop singer or band?

Yes, I like the Cardigans, the Sugarbabes, the trip-hop music and I still like Bjork. Just because I do music with incorporate Arabic music it doesn't mean I don't like European music. I like all music, also Puccini and opera. 

Portrait of Natacha Atlas

A dancer, a singer and a composer, Natacha Atlas has no frontiers, as a woman and as an artist. Once, during a recent trip to Israel, she described herself as "a human Gaza strip". She was referring to the complex melange of influences - both genetic and environmental - that have shaped her both as an individual and as a performer.
The daughter of an English mother and a Sephardic Jew father, Atlas grew up in a Moroccan suburb of Brussels, becoming fluent in French, Arabic, Spanish and English. There she learned the "raq sharki" belly dance techniques, that she uses to devastating effect on stage today, inflamming the audience. Even more striking than Natacha's dance moves, though, is her voice, which swoops and soars, blending unfettered talent and the complexity of Arabic musical theory into a burst of sound that is thrilling, immediate and evocative. Still, though, she recalls the Cocteau Twins' chanteuse Elizabeth Fraser and her oneiric vocalism. "She sings like a nightingale perched on a diamond chalice", the British music magazine Melody Maker wrote.

The Natacha's formula is the result of years of musical cross-over since she moved to England, as a teenager and became Northampton's first Arabic rock singer. Later, dividing her time between the UK and Brussels, she sang in a variety of Turkish and Arabic nightclub and spent a brief stint in Belgian salsa band called Mandanga. But the success arrived mainly owing to the collaboration to the English group Transglobal Underground she joined to as a lead singer and a belly dancer in many international festivals, such as Glastonbury and Womad, the world music happening by Peter Gabriel. All together they recorded two successful albums, Dream of 100 Nations and International Times.
She became a solo singer in her successive albums Diaspora and Halim and her sensual cross-over got admired all around the world. Afterwards, her music moved easily between classical Arab inflections and dance/dub rhythms.

The multi-ethnical album Gedida is the best synthesis of all that. It's a marvellous musical trip from North Africa to Europe, a new and explosive fusion between East and West. "It's a sort of 'Islamic pop', where the millenarian psalmodies of Arabian tradition are melted with the metropolitan rhyhtm-machines, where the traditional instruments like oud, bouzouki, tablas, dulcimer, riqq, and bendir take turns with the 'scratch' of the most daring British deejays". In this Babele of sounds and languages, you can find jewels like the single "Mistaneek", a wonderful fusion between dance rhythms and Middle-Eastern sounds, or the Frech-Arabic ballad "Mon Amie La Rose", a cover of the delicate song performed by Françoise Hardy more than thirty years ago. The tracks of "Gedida" are lovely ballads about love, feelings and eternal emotions.

The little Natacha - 156 centimetres heels included, wonderful green eyes and Junoesque body as every "belly dancer" - has a clear view of her musical style: "Somebody called it "new raï", linking it with the music of Khaled, Cheb Mami, Rachid Taha e Bellemou Messaoud: but I totally disagree", she said. "I feel more close to an Egyptian style. That's why I spend all my free time in Cairo in order to improve my knowledge of the Egyptian language and music. That's why my main influences are the great singers of the Egyptian tradition before the 'shaabi'. And all these people could easily interact with my Western "monstre sacre": Sinead O'Connor, Asian Dub Foundantion and, above all, Björk, a chanteuse that I would like to collaborate with in a few time".

The latest work of this extraordinary singer and dancer is called Ayeshteni. It's another cross-over between East and West on the style of "Gedida", with some daring experiments - a cover of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins's classic "I put the spell on you" - and a homage to Jacques Brel with "Ne me quitte pas". In the meantime, Natacha Atlas has become one of the most requested vocalist of the international scene, as her collaboration to the latest Franco Battiato's album ("Ferro Battuto") confirmed. But her greatest desire is to spread her music also in Egypt where, though the recent changes, "these kind of matters are still forbidden".

Foretold In The Language Of Dreams (2002) is a collaboration with Marc Eagleton.