Growing up in Iraq and Egypt, Nadin Al Khalidi had no interest in Arabic music. As a child she studied the violin, as a teenager she idolised Joan Baez, and by her 20s she wanted to form a punk band. So how did she come to be the frontwoman of Tarabband, singing in Arabic over Middle Eastern rhythms?
Over the phone from Spain where Tarabband (a play on the Arabic word tarab meaning “ecstasy in music”) are performing, the 35-year-old says her songs are a reflection of a life spent ricocheting between countries and conflicts. She was born in Iraq in 1980, when the eight-year war with Iran began, while her teenage years were scarred initially by the first Gulf conflict, and then the deprivation caused by economic sanctions, growing extremism and civil unrest. “The war never stopped,” she says flatly.
Through it all music – especially western music – was an escape. “I grew up listening to Abba and Sinatra on vinyl, and every Friday we would watch The Sound of Music,” she says with a smile in her voice. Her Egyptian mother was a pianist, and her Iraqi father an actor and singer, while Khalidi herself was enrolled at the Music and Ballet School in Baghdad until she was 11.
Her father, she says, was something of a bohemian who “loved art, green fields and nature.” When the war with Iran finally ended the family planned a trip to Europe – but by the time they had got their passports, the borders were closed as the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf war loomed.
“It was the most horrific period of my life,” Khalidi remembers. The family’s apartment was in a precarious position, between two government ministries and a radio station. “We saw bombs drop and bodies in the streets. Everything happened around us. We had anti-aircraft [weapons] on the roof of our building.
“We were in a cellar for a week with lots of other people – you never know if it will blow. When you come out will you see dead bodies? Or your house demolished? I can’t make it sound pretty – it’s an unbearable situation.” Yet somehow, she says, “miraculously you adjust”.
After the war ended, Khalidi’s mother fell ill and the family moved to Egypt for her treatment. “We were considered foreigners, and I didn’t have the right to go to music school. We couldn’t afford it either.” A year later her mother died.
Although she, her older sister and father stayed in Egypt until 1998, Khalidi said she found it hard to adjust and never felt completely at home. As her father grew older, and his two daughters grew up, he became more anxious about the restrictions the family faced in Egypt. “He was desperate to secure our future. He wanted us to go to college.”
The family moved back to Iraq, but while Khalidi could study for her degree in English literature and translation, the country was unravelling. “Everything was deteriorating. You had to queue for bread and water. Electricity was for three hours a day even in 45C heat. There were attacks in the suburbs. My father’s main concern was how to look after us in a country like that, in such a corrupt system. You don’t know what could happen with two teenage girls – even walking in the streets.”
In the midst of this turmoil one thing kept her going. “I always say what saved my soul was Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel.” Along with her friends she took refuge in culture, “the boys and girls I spent time with just cared about the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix – art and music.”
When her boyfriend gave her a book about Woodstock, Khalidi was entranced by Baez in particular. “It was like opening the gates to Eden. I liked the simplicity of music, being together with inspiring people singing about freedom and equality and being against war. Seeing Joan Baez, pregnant, with her guitar and powerful voice – it made a change in me.”
But she could not help but contrast the freedom, women’s voices and messages of peace at Woodstock with the brutality around her, which was growing ever closer.
“By the end of 2000, there was a horrifying event in our building. One day we heard women and children screaming. We lived on the sixth floor and went out and looked down into the yard. We saw a couple of big guys dressed in black wearing masks. They had swords – they beheaded two women who lived in our building. They wrote on their door that it was a warning to women to ‘live an honourable life’.”
Khalidi says it was impossible to find out why her neighbours were killed. “Some people said [the men] were religious extremists – others said the women were prostitutes shown on video having sex on the Iraqi flag. Others that they had hooked up with men from the government and knew too many secrets.”
When they heard rumours of another looming war, the sisters escaped – paying smugglers to take them to Europe. Khalidi has never returned, although her emotional scars remain. Of her Iraqi friends, half have died, she says, some in terrifying ways. One, a heavy metal guitar player, was kidnapped and tortured by extremists, convinced he was working for the US Marines. Actually, says Khalidi, he was doing translation for a German radio station. He was eventually killed alongside his pregnant wife, his father and brother-in-law. “They left their bodies on the sidewalk ... it could have been me or my sister,” she says.
Eventually, Khalidi arrived in Sweden where she threw herself into making music – writing songs and playing in pubs in Gothenburg and, later, Malmö. One day a theatre director, looking for an Arabic singer, contacted her for a show mixing Arabic and Swedish poetry and music. “I was sceptical,” she admits. “I said, ‘I don’t sing in Arabic.’ But he kept calling. That was my first job in Sweden.”
In that same theatre production was Gabriel Hermansson, who was studying folk music and had an enthusiasm for Middle Eastern music. Together they formed a band and, slowly, Khalidi’s passion for Arabic music was ignited. Jazz, Persian and Latin influences followed as more musicians joined them. By 2014 the band had won a clutch of awards at the Swedish world music awards.
Her songs are based, she says, on “my nightmares and my PTSD, my relationships and loyalty issues – the fact I can’t have light relationships”. She says she was surprised, but thrilled, when she discovered Tarabband had a growing following in the Middle East. “Young women in Egypt came to me and said, ‘We want to do what you do, but the tide against us is too strong.’ So it feels like a duty to think about what more I can do for them.”
Khalidi’s songs are often taken from real life – Zaffat Ceylan is about a Kurdish girl who goes to fight Islamic State; Ashofak Baden is the story of an Iraqi couple who shared their photo on social media days before Isis invaded their town.
Watching the new wave of refugees fleeing the Middle East arrive in Europe is a curious feeling, says Khalidi, who has started teaching Swedish to newly arrived migrants. “I have started from zero and built my life again. But, somehow, I feel guilty and that I should do more.”
Talking about the new border controls being put in place on the Malmö bridge between Sweden and Denmark, her voice cracks. “It’s sad to see the police take families and children down from the train – however respectfully – when you know where they have come from and what they are fleeing from.”
She bristles when I ask whether Europe is doing enough to look after refugees. “Europe is doing more than countries which lie closer to the problem – the Gulf countries. Why are they not moving a finger?”
She is equally sharp when asked if she hopes her music will show a different side to Arab culture. “That means one side is terrorism – and I don’t agree with that. I am born in a Muslim country but that doesn’t make me a terrorist. I am an atheist, I believe in love, music and people. But the media keeps pushing in our faces, Arab, Arab, Arab, terror, terror, Muslim, Muslim. Terrorism is everywhere. Look at Breivik – no one calls him a terrorist. The attackers [in Istanbul] were Russian or from Uzbekistan. No one talks about Russians being terrorists.”
Her band, she says, shows what can be achieved when people from different cultures come together. With their fusion of musical styles “it says a lot without words”, she says. “We don’t think, ‘You are an Arab or a Swede’ – we just play and it sounds great.”
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