Lebanese Artist Naima Shalhoub Teases Upcoming Album with New Single ‘Five (The Calling)’

Following May’s Tarb-inspired folk release, ‘Two (Rivers in the Desert)', Lebanese musician and singer, Naima Shalhoub, has released the second track from her upcoming album, Siphr.

In ‘Five (The Calling)’, the California-based artist strips things down considerably, with the first two thirds of the song carried by piano and bass. It provides a bedding for Shalhoub’s powerful, soulful vocals, as she sings of following a path, maybe even fate: “You may here a thousand voices calling you another way/But you will know the heavenly sound calling your name.”
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 792px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=4244944575/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://naimashalhoub.bandcamp.com/track/five-the-calling-ft-excentrik-ed-baskerville-marcus-shelby">Five (The Calling) ft. Excentrik, Ed Baskerville &amp; Marcus Shelby by Naima Shalhoub</a></iframe>
It’s the last third of the track that really leaves an impression, however. With Ed Baskerville on cello, Marcus Shelby on bass and Palestinian-American musician, Excentrik, (who also contributed on the previous single) on guitar, the three instruments quickly build to a crescendo, somehow existing both in unity and discord. It twinkles and rumbles, with Shalhoub’s powerful whaling bringing them together as a fourth instrument.

It’s difficult track to pin down; you can hear elements of folk, jazz and the faint influence of Tarb, while the instrumentation – particularly at the end – also seemingly finding influence in the melodic modes of maqam.

50% of the proceeds for the single thins month will be donated to Egna Legna, a non-profit that works on migrant domestic workers’ issues and general women’s issues in Lebanon and Ethiopia, including the kafala system that has come under scrutiny in Lebanon this year. This isn’t the first time that Shalhoub has combined her music with greater causes. In 2015, she released a live LP that was recorded in collaboration with a group of women whom she had been teaching a course on music as an empowering tool.

Siphr will be her first studio album and is scheduled for release in August.

Follow Shalhoub on Anghami, Facebook and Instagram.