FEATURE: Spotlight: Nemahsis — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Nemahsis

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I think that the eleven achers E.P…

is one of the most important from last year. Coming from the Palestinian-Canadian singer-songwriter Nemah Hasan, a.k.a Nemahsis, it is a remarkable, open, moving, and hugely powerful work. I am going to come to a few interviews with Nemahsis but, first, here are some more details regarding an E.P. that everyone needs to hear:

“Burgeoning Canadian artist Nemahsis shares her highly-anticipated eleven achers EP. To celebrate her debut project, Nemah also reveals the music video for ‘i’m not gonna kill you’.

With Nemah’s superb vocals at the forefront, ‘i’m not gonna kill you’ details the adversity she faced onboard a flight from Toronto to LA. She says, “A middle-aged 6’3 man threatened by my existence. 5 foot nothing girl with a cloth over her head.“ The young Canadian decided to use this harrowing experience and transform it into art.

Reuniting with creatives Crowns & Owls, the compelling visual for ‘i’m not gonna kill you’ follows Nemah as she shares a passionate performance of her song amongst the bustling cityscape established in the ‘dollar signs’ video.

A beautiful body of work, eleven achers comprises over 6-tracks, encapsulating Nemah’s vulnerability and innermost thoughts towards her religious heritage and complex cultural upbringing. She highlights pivotal moments in her life to date through her thought-provoking lyrics, which are becoming her musical signature.

When speaking about the inspiration behind her EP title, Nemah says, “I’ve watched every sibling leave our home at one point or another trying to “find” the part of themselves that wasn’t written by my parents. I was the only one to remain. I wasn’t curious because I observed enough to know this world is full of heartache and false hope. I wasn’t scared of being “boring” by finding happiness between these walls. slowly as we grew up, one by one, each sibling found their way back home, to our 11-acre farm. it hurt to see everyone leave what was once so natural to us… to just leave behind the foundation & relationships we built together for something foreign.”

Alongside the lead single ‘i’m not gonna kill you’, Nemah’s debut EP includes new tracks ‘immigrant’s tale’, ‘suicide’, ‘hold on to me’ as well as previous releases, ‘dollar signs’, and ‘paper thin’.

Hailing from the outskirts of Toronto, Nemahsis began paving the way for her musical career last year. Her debut single ‘what if i took it off for you?’, which is approaching 2 million Spotify streams, defines so much of what she does as an artist; she stands up for what she believes in and what is right by her community. As a young Muslim woman, Nemah claims, “I’m not going to be anybody’s token Hijabi girl”.

There was a lot of interest around Nemahsis last year. An artist tipped for success in 2022, that momentum and promise is going to continue through this year. There will be people who do not know her music, so go and follow Nemahsis on social media and keep your eyes open for updates. NME put this amazing artist on their radar last year. I think that platforms like TikTok and Instagram are incredibly important, not only for launching music, but for raising awareness of different causes, concerns and cultures. It is instrumental when it comes to bringing artists like Nemahsis to a wider audience:

“With Nemahsis, 27-year-old Nemah Hasan wants the world to know that what you see is not what you get. When the Palestinian-Canadian singer-songwriter – who began her career on Instagram, making videos about beauty and modest fashion, and posting Adele covers – released her rich and introspective debut single ‘What If I Took it Off For You?’ in 2021, she started a vital conversation.

The track saw Hasan seeking justice after she was exploited by a major company, who offered her no compensation after she shot an advertising campaign with them. It was a galvanising moment that positioned the Ontario native as a gateway artist, encouraging other Muslim women to use TikTok to talk about their experiences of discrimination over the song’s delicate instrumentation. Across the app, the song has soundtracked thousands of uplifting videos of women discussing their relationship with the hijab, and how wearing it empowers them.

NME: On ‘Dollar Signs’, you tackle the representation of POC and Muslim women in the media – do you think that’s a topic that needs to be addressed more widely in music?

“A lot of my peers that are Muslim don’t necessarily want to do what I’m doing. But I feel like I can’t just sing easygoing songs without airing out the obvious. With my music, I’m trying to share more about the lives of Muslim women with people, so that you guys can help us, and become more aware. There’s definitely both a therapeutic side and an educational side to my music; the only way for us to learn is to share these stories instead of bottling them up.”

You have gone from starting out as a social media influencer to being celebrated more widely for your music. What new challenges have you had to face?

“A lot of people deliberately don’t want to like my music because I have a platform and I’m an influencer, or started out that way at least. But then people click on one of my songs and their minds are changed. Most of the comments I get are like, ‘Damn, I really didn’t want to like this song, but you blew me away.’ Seeing how well my music has been received has been a real confidence boost.”

Since you are so vulnerable in your music, is it difficult when fans also expect that level of openness from you online?

“I’ve put so much of myself on social media, through the covers I’ve shared to the outfits I’ve put together; I didn’t grow my audience so that I could eventually make music, I grew it as an outlet to be creative. If people are following me for the right reasons, they know that I’m honest in what I write. I’m a transparent person and I think people appreciate that, I’d never want to come across as mysterious.”

How does it feel knowing that Elton John is a fan of yours?

“When Elton played the song [on the radio], I finally had something to call my dad about. He’s super religious and doesn’t know a lot about popular culture – but you’d have to live under a rock to not know who Elton John is! My dad thought it was amazing that one of the most iconic pop stars ever shared my music, he was so proud.

“Elton understood the assignment to the point of knowing what the song was even about. He clearly took time to try and understand the message on a deeper level; he really understands the importance of having a significant story behind a song. To have someone as influential as Elton John hear my music and then want to find out what it means is crazy, it absolutely blew my mind”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Aria Shahrokhshahi

Back in March, HUNGER spoke with Nemahsis ahead of the release of eleven achers. I shall not source the entire conversation, but I would urge people to read it, as there are a lot of fascinating answers to the questions. It is clear that Nemahsis wants to inspire young women. An artist who wants to start conversations and tackle misconceptions and important subjects through her songs, there is something essential about her music. It holds this special power that is hard to deny and shake:

“What kind of power do you think TikTok has now beyond being able to turn up-and-coming artists into megastars?

I think it really shows people that personality matters. You see a lot of people come from Instagram and try to do it, but think that someone was going to be different. Just like how pictures paint a thousand words, I think people were picking those words based on the person that they thought they would be. On TikTok, it’s so easy to win someone over, but it’s also so easy to lose an audience.

Is it through ‘airing the obvious’ that you hope to inspire young women? Or through the melody, feeling or meaning?

I do hope to inspire other women so they don’t take as long as I did to do what they want to do. When I came into this, we already had models on the runway that were wearing hijabs, now we have actors that are wearing hijabs, so why not another musician? So I do hope it will inspire women to come forward and realise that they can also be the fairy princess, you know what I mean? But I also hope that I can be a voice for anybody who thinks that their voice hasn’t been spoken yet. Even just the words on What if I took it off for you? It’s very taboo to talk about your insecurities about hijab. Most people would take it off and go hide, and it’s not a proud thing or anything like that, but I think airing it out and making it a safe space so it’s not as taboo anymore, I think it will help empower a lot of women.

There’s a lot of personal experiences that you put into your music, and then on the other side of that you have the social media side with a hefty following. Do you ever worry that you there’s parts of you that you want to hold back for yourself?

That was the hardest thing ever. After I released my first song, I was like, ‘what am I doing?’ I went back and said I didn’t want to release any of my EP. Ask my parents, I’m a very reserved person. I don’t like when people see me vulnerable or when I cry, they barely even see that. So, it was so easy to get stuck into channelling these emotions that needed to be said, and then on the other hand having to release it to the world and everyone will know how vulnerable you are… it was scary. I almost went back and said that we’re not doing it.

Has that change happened through making music and having a social media presence?

I think what happened was that in middle school I put on the hijab and I started wearing the headscarf. I hid it from my mum because I had so many issues in school, I couldn’t make any friends, I was super bullied and my grades weren’t great because I wouldn’t participate in class. And my mum said, ‘you’re literally the bottom-feeder. Why are you going to put on the hijab and give them another reason to not invite you to birthday parties?’ I said that I needed to do it. I put it on and came into school and hid it from my mum, and I thought that it was my chance at a new start and that I could be a whole different person. I became an entertainer – I used to be called ‘Robo-Girl’ because I used to dance. I would perform and turn on a show for everybody, night and day. The teacher reached out a couple of weeks in and said, ‘we have seen a tremendous increase in Nemah’s friends at school, in her grades, and we want to know what the change was. We think the hijab might have contributed to it’. My mum was like, ‘what do you mean?’ I came home and my mum was crying, and she said that she didn’t think that I understood it or that I was ready for it, but it turns out that it was the best decision for me. I got to hide a part of me and keep something for myself, and by holding that for me — my hair and my body — I could show other parts of me that I couldn’t before. That was the biggest change. And slowly, every year, I got even more confident and I became very stylish with my hijab because now that I was covering so much and not revealing parts of me for the world to see, I was able to shine through my clothing, my self expression, my voice, my dancing.

You did ask earlier about how it felt to put yourself out there… I told my manager that I don’t dance anymore, dancing is for me now. That’s something that I decided now that I’m putting my voice out there and my music, dancing is just for me. So anybody that got to see me dancing in high school and stuff, nobody is going to see it again, I think… we’ll see”.

I am going to end things with an interview from COMPLEX. Published after the release of eleven achers, Nemahsis’ name and music definitely reached new people. I do feel this year is going to be the best yet for the Palestinian-Canadian treasure. Someone I discovered fairly recently, I am now compelled to watch her closely and see where her career goes. After being stunned by eleven achers, I am now excited for the next chapter. Nemahsis is going to inspire so many other artists. Because of that, she should be celebrated and loved – and there is already so much love out there for her:

“Obviously, your EP is out, so congratulations on that. I would love for you to share a little bit about the journey to get there and what the process was like recording it and putting it together.

So it was a long process to [get] to a place where I felt emotionally ready to really execute everything. I would say the build-up was a little over a year to actually [figure] out what I wanted to say as a new artist, basically. But then once I had figured it out, a year later it all came together.

So in a matter of months, basically, it came together so quickly that it felt so right. Every vocal take on every song is the demo vocals.

What!

Yeah. So usually I’ll write a song and then because I’ve been writing all day, sometimes [lasting] two days long, or 14 hours or 10 hours, I’ll just lay down a demo thinking I can go home, come back and perform it better. But every time I try to record vocals for every song, it was almost like the emotion wasn’t there because it had channelled out of the writing experience for that song.

“I think with songwriting, being as vulnerable as I am on this project, it’s such a scary territory because I let people see me and all of my insecurities in a way that I’ve never before with anybody, let alone like millions of people that stream [me].”

I feel like I’ve never heard that ever. I talked to so many musicians that I don’t think I’ve ever, ever, heard that. So, I mean, that’s very impressive.

So going into that and the fact that I mean, as you just said, with your emotions being so raw, I feel like that rawness and you being so candid is such a big part of your music because you can look to any number of your songs like “what if i took it off for you?” and “dollar signs”—I’m wondering, do you ever find it challenging to be so vulnerable in your songwriting?

Yeah, I think it might be the worst feeling to date I think, because growing up in an Arab household you’re kind of taught that showing your emotions is kind of weak, and a lot of people can relate to that. So growing up it was like, don’t ever show your tears, don’t ever show that you’re scared, even if there’s a guy rolling behind you, you’re supposed to act oblivious so that they don’t know that they’re anticipating it.

So I think with songwriting, being as vulnerable as I am on this project, it’s such a scary territory because I let people see me and all of my insecurities in a way that I’ve never before with anybody, let alone like millions of people that stream [me]. I think it’s it’s scary to know that I’ve revealed my weaknesses to the world in a way, because now there’s no place for me to be mysterious or take back what I’ve shown to the world, if that makes sense. So that’s just scary. But once you get past that, it is definitely very beautiful. But I’m still going through that. It’s a rollercoaster.

What you just described sounds like some form of catharsis. I also really wanted to talk about “immigrant’s tale” specifically. I personally love that track. It really resonated with me—my mom’s an immigrant who came to Canada, so I just really thought it was so beautiful. I would love for you to chat about that one.

Yeah, that was the last addition to the EP. I wrote that like two months before it came out. I was going to the sessions to write “hold on to me” part two, so I was in album mode at this point. I thought the EP was done. And then on my way there, my sister had left me a voicemail and she was like, “Hey, mom doesn’t want to bug you but I was with her yesterday and she said she misses you. She didn’t want to bug you, she’s waiting for you to call her.” And then before she ends the call she was like, “You know, there’s a little part of her that’s living through you because you’re doing everything she couldn’t do, like, travel and write and do art and meet people.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Cheb Moha

So branching off of that a little bit, actually, you posted on TikTok about your dad and how you sort of had to hide your music for the first 20 years of your life, but that he’s come around now. So tell me a little bit about that.

Honestly, I think him not knowing about my music was obviously… not his fault, but I think that because he told us music was such a sin and he painted it in such a way, I was scared to show him for so long that it’s a big part of me because I was scared to let him down. He’s given up so much. He sacrificed so much so that we could get an education that he never got, and do all of those things that he didn’t get to do because he had to sacrifice so much to feed his family. I think to be like, “Hey you told me not to do this, but I love this,” is a very scary thing to admit because you don’t want to let them down.

And I think one of my biggest regrets was not trusting that he would understand how something that isn’t important to him could be important to me. And I wish I had opened up a bit sooner about it because I think he and I would have had the connection that we have now a lot sooner. Honestly, I think that’s it, because the moment he found out, it was like he knew nothing and then knew everything the next night.

And then it was finally [clear]. He didn’t really understand me as a person—me and him didn’t connect on a lot of things. He… likes to build things, shoot things, [and] be a man. And I was very much introverted. I didn’t like to talk. I was very quiet. And then now, for the first time ever, he was able to see me as Nemah his daughter and all the missing pieces. And so and he was like, ‘Ah-ha, she’s just a creative,’ which he isn’t. He’s the opposite. He does construction. So he blueprints out job [sites] and then works [for weeks on jobs]. I’m creatively chaotic and we’re just polar opposites. But the parts he didn’t know about me are the things that we connect on now. So yeah, he’s super supportive and I don’t think it’s about him coming around, because he didn’t even know about it. I didn’t give him a chance to really know if he needed to come around or not. I think it’s more just that the secrets that I was kind of ashamed of, I finally allowed to come to the surface so that he can embrace the person [I am].

It’s interesting that you mention that because this is something I’ve noticed more and more [in recent years] is all of these women of colour who, you know, maybe they’re winning an award in something for the first time, these people are saying, “I don’t ever want to be first because that’s too much pressure.” And it’s very interesting because I feel like there was a period of time where people went from feeling you need to be so grateful to be the first one. But it’s also a double-edged sword, because who wants all of that pressure?

So I think the reason why there’s also pressure on that is because as artists, we’re very insecure. And I think I don’t want to be known just because I was the first to do it. I want to be known because I did it well. So I think when you’re the first one to do it, it’s like… I’m putting in all this energy to be the best, but nobody’s even going to notice if I’m the best. I’m just going to always be [seen] as the first, and that’s a label [that’s hard] to have as a Black woman [or] as a hijabi woman, a Palestinian woman or as a trans woman. And it just sucks, because if you look at all the work we put in, we have [more to offer] than a title like that. So I do feel that”.

An artist I have not been able to get out of my head since I first heard her, Nemahsis’ music is utterly unforgettable. I just know she will be in the industry for years to come. Small wonder she has already been heralded as an artist to watch. Go and follow her on social media and check out everything she has done. This amazing artist has many years ahead because what we have heard so far is…