Yal Solan Honours Sudanese Folklore on New Single ‘Ya Enay Kafak Alam'

Lebanese singer‑songwriter‑poet Yal Solan is quietly becoming one of the Arab world’s most promising voices, blending conscious lyricism with a genre‑fluid sound that spans R&B, pop, and traditional Arab music. With roots in poetry and a background that incorporates visual art, design, and performance, Solan crafts music that feels both deeply personal and broadly resonant, often advocating for Arab women’s liberation and empowerment.

Her latest single, 'Ya Enay Kafak Alam', is a bold reinterpretation of a traditional Sudanese folkloric song. Teaming up with Tunisian producer Bilel Abdou, Solan fuses the original’s mantra chants with modern R&B and pop textures, layering her own poetic verses on themes of love, mourning, and collective struggle. In her take, she crafts a haunting, soulful piece, with interludes of spoken words, subtly calling attention to the ongoing suffering in Sudan and freedom for the Arab world.

The music video for the track, directed by Rouba Noureddine, was recorded and filmed in her homeland, Lebanon. Throughout the video, we follow Sal’s metamorphoses from a traditional Arab woman adorned in gold and blinding veils to a rebel with a buzzcut. Yal’s acting comes as a metaphor for the Arab woman’s yearning to break from inherited constraints toward self‑determined identity. 

‘Ya Enay Kafak Alam’ comes shortly after her single, ‘Manam’, for her album, 'Raddit Fe3el', a meditation on her coping mechanism amid the ongoing political turmoil in Lebanon. She also released ‘La7ali’ this year, an evocative portrait of the beauty of solitude arranged and produced in collaboration with legendary artist Bachar Mar-Khalife.