28/2
Maqam Series Finale | Badiaa Bouhrizi | Rasha Nahas |

Palestinian singer, composer and instrumentalist Rasha Nahas has a distinctive approach to songwriting, storytelling and performance.
A genre-defying and narrative-focused artist, Rasha Nahas has been crafting a keenly singular music universe, cultivated in and loyal to the underground.

Driven by candid lyrics with disarming vulnerability, Rasha has created a sound that moves seamlessly between the
resonances of the old school rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter era, and the anarchic heyday of ‘80s electronica.

Her latest two-chapter LP, ’Amrat’ released in January 2023, is a sentimental body of work which maneuvers seamlessly
between the thematic duality of urban life and rural landscapes.

Rasha is among the first to receive the Bertha Foundation’s Artivism Award in 2022.

Also known by her stage name Neysatu, is a singer-songwriter and composer who represents the alternative music scene in Tunisia.
She began her performing career at age seven as a soloist in a local choir, subsequently joining the Tahar Haddad choir, which performs classical styles of Arabic music such as muwashshahat and ma’luf. Her music is a minimalistic styled with influenced of Amazigh music of northwest Tunisia.

Badiaa sings in fuṣḥá (Modern Standard Arabic), and her style is self-described as a “new sound of Northern Africa,” a mixture of local traditions, classical Arabic music, jazz, funk, neo-soul, electronica, and reggae. Though she has periodically been banned from performing in Tunisia because her lyrics discuss political resistance, Tunisians attach the word “Miltazema” (Arabic for “committed”) to her name, a title given to artists who are committed to the promotion of freedom and justice.

‎

Her song “Manifesto” is about her brother’s incarceration as a socio-political rapper who was unjustly arrested and jailed for making dissent music. She also composed and performed a song written by Palestinian resistance poet Fadwa Touqan called “Ila Salma,” which was dedicated to the Palestinian writer Salma Al-Jayyousi. In 2011, she won the Arab alternative song award for her song “Ila Selma,” and earned an Al Mawred Al Thaqafi scholarship, which gave her the means to produce her first album