In a Dubai recording studio, hijab-clad Ghaliaa Chaker tuned her guitar and belted out original songs as she builds a career that is turning heads for more than just her music.
The 26-year-old Syrian, who was raised in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has become a social media sensation, with 437,000 followers on Instagram and millions of views on her YouTube channel.
She offers not only a unique sound, but also an unusual look in a region where artists who wear the hijab are few and far between.
Photo: AFP
“I hope that I have paved the way for other” hijabi singers, Chaker said at the studio. “It is a very beautiful thing to know that you have ... given a push to a girl who has many dreams and is unable to achieve them because she has never seen another girl do the same thing.”
Chaker, a keen motorbike rider who is part of an all-hijabi biker squad in Dubai, began composing and writing lyrics at the age of 16.
She drew inspiration from Nedaa Shrara, a veiled Jordanian singer who won the Arabic version of The Voice in 2015.
Photo: AFP
Shrara had stirred controversy among some Arab fans who were not accustomed to seeing a singer wearing the head covering.
For Chaker, who said she often receives criticism online, Shrara was a symbol of “self-confidence.”
After seeing her, “I said to myself that I can do it too,” Chaker said.
Chaker’s first song, composed in English, was picked up by Dubai radio stations in 2018, marking the start of her musical career.
She now sings mostly in Arabic, as young talents with innovative sounds are rising in the regional music scene.
The green-eyed singer said the headscarf had never been an obstacle in her life.
“There is nothing that I have wanted to do and not done because I wear the veil,” Chaker said.
However, the issue of women singing has always been controversial in conservative Islamic societies.
Although the Koran does not explicitly prohibit singing, or ban women from performing music, some religious academics frown upon the idea, viewing it as immodest.
Chaker said her immediate family has always supported her, but relatives in Syria were “very surprised at first,” mainly because they feared how people would react.
She said she receives a lot of “negative comments” on social media, including from family and friends.
“It bothers me of course, but I try to remember the positive comments and how much people love my music,” she said.
Chaker traces her artistic influences to her early upbringing in Al Ain, a former desert oasis and now a city in Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE’s seven sheikhdoms.
At home, her father blasted Arab singers such as Fairouz, an iconic Lebanese singer, and Egyptian diva Umm Kalthoum, while Chaker’s mother preferred Western music including Elvis Presley, she said.
“The music mixture in the house was always rich,” she said, influencing her sound which she describes as a mix of R&B, hip hop, electro pop, indie and jazz.
A multi-instrumentalist, Chaker credits her father with her love of the drums, guitar and piano, all instruments that she plays.
Instead of gifting her toys as a child, he would buy her new instruments, she said.
The Middle Eastern darbuka drum is “the closest to my heart because I often played it with my father who loves it very much and it is the basis of oriental rhythm,” she said.
The singer, who performed in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, last month, said she wants to take her music beyond the Middle East.
“It is very important to me that my music is heard in Europe, in America, in Australia, in the whole world, maybe even in Latin America,” she said, adding that she aspires to “collaborate with many artists from different countries.”
“It is time for the Western world to know how beautiful our music is,” she said.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
RSS