CFA Arts Administration Intern Chloe Jones ’15 talks to singer-songwriter Omnia Hegazy, who performs with her band this Friday, March 27, 2015 at 8pm in Crowell Concert Hall as part of Muslim Women’s Voices at Wesleyan, in this entry from the Center for the Arts blog.
You began writing lyrics for your first EP on a trip to Egypt in 2010. What about the trip inspired you to start writing?
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| Omnia Hegazy |
I
tend to take a notebook with me and scribble wherever I go, and it was
the summer before [Hosni] Mubarak was overthrown, so everyone was
talking about politics all the time. I was staying in a youth shelter
at the time and talking with other Egyptians about what was going on and
writing down my observations about how women are treated, about things I
felt were unfair in the culture. These are things that I grew up with
in America, as well—people take their culture with them. So I started
writing things down and not necessarily as an outsider because these
things do exist in America too. These inequalities are not just among
Egyptians but everybody.
What inspired your second EP, Judgment Day?
I wrote this song after watching a film called
The Stoning of Soraya M,
based [on] a true story about a woman in Iran who was stoned because
her husband framed her for adultery. This actually happened in the
1980s. I was so upset by the film that I wrote a song, not so much
about the film, but about what is happening to people of my faith. It
was a critique about how I feel some people of my faith have taken
religion and made it so evil and how it can really harm people. The
song became the title track of the EP.
Judgment Day is a provocative title. What does the title mean to you?
I
feel that as a Middle Eastern woman, there is a lot of judgment. We
face a lot more judgment than our male counterparts. Our reputation is
our biggest asset in a lot of cases. The title was about that feeling of
constantly being judged. I feel like every day is judgment day for an
Arab woman, a Muslim woman. Everyone else is judging what you should
do, what you should say, what you should sing. That’s what I tried to
address with the title and specifically with that song.
You
say you might have been a journalist, had your life gone a different
direction. Thinking about journalism and songwriting as two forms of
storytelling, what do you think song achieves that journalism does not?
For
me, writing a song can appeal to people’s emotions in a way that hard
news just can’t. Often people just want to turn the news off because
it’s so depressing, but with song one can elaborate behind whatever
story you’re telling to make people really feel. It’s not just the
facts, not just what happened. I think the reason song is so effective
is that it helps creates empathy in a way that sometimes hard news just
doesn’t.
What do you hope people will gain from listening to your music?
I
want to make people think. I want people to have a good time, but
there’s a lot of music out there that doesn’t necessarily really make
people think. To be fair, I think that all music has a place. I don’t
think you have to address an issue for the music to be important, like
the stuff I’m writing now is more about personal things. I think that’s
just as important because I think songwriting attempts to reach an
understanding about the human condition. I want people to feel
something when they listen to my music. Whether I’m writing about a
break up or political evil, I just want them to feel something.
Do
you think your songs fall into either a personal or political category,
or do you think both the personal and the political are manifest in
each song you write?
To me the two are intertwined. How I
feel about any given issue is political, and it’s personal. I’m
observing, and I recognize that there’s bias in my music. I wouldn’t
see it as hard news, so much as an op-ed. It’s personal and political.
One of my newer singles that just came out is very personal. It’s
about street harassment, about being a woman and feeling unsafe. That
is actually something political—there’s a feminist message in the song,
[and] it’s talking about the place of women in society—but it’s very
personal.
Who are some of your greatest musical influences?
One of the biggest is a singer from Columbia named
Juanes. He’s a pop/rock singer-songwriter and a mean guitar player. He’s actually the best selling artist in Columbia, even before
Shakira.
But if you listen to his older stuff, he was using really catchy
melodies to write really meaningful things. He has one song that is so
catchy you want to bob your head to it, but then you really listen to it
and realize he’s talking about landmines. He made me realize that pop
music is actually a really useful vehicle to spread a message, and it
doesn’t have to be esoteric or metaphorical to be political. Other than
Juanes, I’m influenced by the 1960s—any of the singer-songwriters of
the 1960s. Also,
India.Arie.
She writes some really catchy songs, but there’s a good message behind
them. She has soul. I like artists with consciousness, not just
political consciousness but any kind.
Omnia Hegazy Friday, March 27, 2015 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$18 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students
At Wesleyan, Ms. Hegazy will be accompanied for the first time outside of New York City by drummer Max Maples, bassist
Carl Limbacher, electric guitarist
Coyote Anderson, and Natalia Perlaza on Arabic percussion and tabla.
