Oumeima El Khalil

Oumeima

It is our voice, singing love, with beautiful throats yearning for liberation from traditional moulds and styles of music.

Throats that are searching, in singing their difficult lyrics, for a life buoy to escape the wars’ mud.

Throats that challenge themselves to prove the value of the beauty that is still within us, despite all the horror sur­rounding us.

Al-Fayha Choir and my voice are many throats for one Arab voice that screams at de­feated souls and says: This is our letter, this is our language, this is our music. Enough slan­dering and defeat. Let’s do the impossible. Let’s quench our thirst for a poetic and musical history that we own and that we can carry with us to the future; a history that is filled with songs that we respect, so it lands in well-deserved place among other peoples’ music.

It is a voice (a sawt) that never faded away, but climbed rough trails without despair.

A Sawt that chooses to take difficult roads; maybe whoever walks the same path later on will rely on a strong Arabic tradition, while they are searching for reassurance in the dreamed-of beauty.