Emel
Biography Emel
Emel Mathlouthi
When COVID-19 arrived, I was visiting my family in Tunis and ended up being confined inside my childhood home, where my daughter and I had gone to celebrate my father’s 85th birthday.
I was separated from my husband, my band, my collaborators, and all my equipment. But I was immersed in a feeling of nostalgia and memory, surrounded by the blossoming wildflowers, tweeting birds, and blue skies of my hometown. Also, thankfully I was sheltered in with two of my favorite people in the world. Together we were three generations under the same roof - free from school, work, and from outside world distractions.
These feelings drove me to want to create, and to revisit the old spirits that haunted my early years as an artist. All I had with me was my laptop and a simple tape recorder, but through Facebook I was able to find a fan who lent me a classical guitar (a kind of guitar I haven’t played since I was 18!) and a mini-USB cable which made it so I could make decent recordings.
This was early in the pandemic, and the mania of at-home performances was in full swing. In my part of the world, the biggest craze of the moment was a belly dancer, who every night enthralled the masses on Instagram at an appointed hour. Watching this made me both curious about doing performances of my own, but also apprehensive that with such competition nobody would tune in.
But I decided to start performing, at night after I put my daughter to sleep. Often with very little preparation or setlist planning. Then, the most remarkable thing happened: the turn-out and feedback proved to be overwhelmingly positive, especially among my compatriots for who it meant so much to see that we were going through the same struggle. Apart but still on the same ground. As I played and sang my hits and standards, I found myself falling back in love with music that is simple, direct, and from the heart. Far away from the luxury of studios and gear, I was confronted with my own abilities, yet challenged to produce music that was relevant and emotionally driven.
I started my career as a young girl, with no infrastructure, no budget, and no team. I only had my guitar and my voice, and I’d take them onto any stage that would have me. I would rehearse in my stairwell, with its pleasant natural reverb, a sound which I’ve never since been able to reproduce electronically.
Playing live again, it felt like revisiting the womb of my own childhood. I began to feel more at home, in so many senses, than I have in a very long time. After living on three continents, touring dozens of countries, and recording three studio albums of increasing complexity, I was back to the basics. I was myself again, and nothing else.
Encouraged by the feedback of my live performances, I began giving myself 2-3 hours per day to experiment and record - usually after morning homeschooling and making lunch for my father and daughter. I cleaned years of dust out of our rooftop room, cleared a desk from towers of old schoolwork, and settled into a spot by two corner windows. We live on the outskirts of Tunis, on a hilltop, so my view is of the whole city, rolling into the sea. Green pine trees abounding, the pink Bougainvillea in full bloom, and the architecture of the city stretched out like a river of white cascading into the blue Mediterranean.
This view which was matched in richness only by the sounds around me. By day I’d hear birds, the singing of the shepherd with his sheep on the hills behind me, and the punctual call to prayer. Sometimes I would get interrupted with an invitation from my neighbor to share a plate of food from the nightly iftar, or to give me a supportive shout out as she hung her laundry from her rooftop. At night I’d hear the cicadas and frogs echoing from the neighboring hills in a tight vocal competition balanced with millions of light dots from the city.
Each day I’d retreat to the rooftop to indulge this music that moved me. Every day I recorded at least two songs, either covers, revisiting early inspirations, or exploring acoustic takes on some of my own tunes. As time passed, I realized I had accumulated a collection that was intertwined and indivisible, and I decided to release it as one project in two parts: Day and Night.
For me, this is an intimate project that captures how I passed a big portion of my confinement. It ended up being much deeper than I would have ever imagined, and a unique journey with my father and my daughter that taught me a lot about myself, family and giving. It is also a tribute to my home city Tunis, that gave me so much. This is an effort to give my city and fans the sense of togetherness that they shared with me during those confusing and scary times. I hope you will enjoy these songs, and feel the sense of connection and unity that only art can offer.
