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Natacha Atlas (born March 20, 1964) is a Belgian singer known for her fusion of Arabic and North African music with Western electronic music. She once termed her music "cha'abi moderne" (an updated form of Egyptian pop music). Her music has been influenced by many styles including Arabesque music, drum 'n' bass and reggae. Atlas was born in Belgium, of Middle Eastern descent, with ancestral and family links to Egypt, Palestine and Morocco. Having moved around the world for most of her life, living in Brussels, Egypt, Greece and England, her experience of different cultures has most certainly influenced her music. to a father of Moroccan, Egyptian, and Palestinian ancestry who was born in Jerusalem and a British mother who had converted to Islam. Her paternal grandfather was born in Egypt but grew up in Palestine, immigrating to Europe at age 15. However, there has been some disagreement about the origins of Atlas's parents. David Bennun of Melody Maker, in an article on Nation Records's website about Transglobal Underground, reports that Atlas is "a Sephardic Jew on her father's side." In a 2003 interview with Muslim Wakeup, she was asked "MWU!: You’ve commented about some of the rumors that are spread about you--that you don’t know Arabic, because of your Jewish heritage, etc.. How does all that make you feel?" She replied: I am a Muslim. With the Jewish thing, it’s one of those things where someone had a grudge against me and wanted to hurt me. My great great grandfather was Jewish, so may be I have 10% or something. But Jews have always been part of Arab society, so it’s not so unusual for someone to find out that they have Jewish blood. At the end of the day, we really are so connected. Atlas learned several languages, including Arabic, French, English, and Spanish, and has used them all in the course of her career. She grew up in a Moroccan suburb of Brussels, Belgium. After her parents separated, Atlas went to live in Northampton, England with her mother. Natacha's first break came when she sang on Balearic beat crew !Loca's club hit Timbal, and was drawn into the Jah Wobble circle, singing and co-writing with his just-forming band Invaders of the Heart. (She has recently worked with Wobble again, on the 2002 Wobble/Temple of Sound album Shout At The Devil). She also met Transglobal Underground, the London-based multicultural collective who, in blending electronica, dub, hip-hop and funk with Indian, African and Middle Eastern musical forms, were significant role models for today's world-dance phenomenon. The encounter was to turn into a long-standing, happy association. First guesting with them in 1991, she became, two years, later, a member of the core quartet of Transglobal, as lead singer and belly-dancer (the latter not some kind of limp tourist-pleasing wiggle but the real raq sharki). A couple of years later, it was the band's Tim Whelan, Hamid ManTu and Nick Page (a.k.a. Count Dubulah, now of Temple of Sound) who helped her to make her first solo album, Diaspora. In parallel with the success of her solo albums she remained a full-time Transglobal member, and Transglobals constituted her backing band, until they left Nation in 1999, and they have remained allies throughout her subsequent career. She began her career with two jobs as a belly dancer and the lead singer of a Belgian salsa band. In 1991, she recorded the track "Timbal" with Balearic Beat on the album ¡Loca!. Atlas also worked with Jah Wobble composing five tracks for the LP Rising above Bedlam. Through the recording of ¡Loca!, Atlas met British labelmates Transglobal Underground (TGU), who at the time had a Top 40 hit, "Templehead." She became the lead singer and belly dancer for the group, which focused on mixing Eastern and Western sounds as well as other styles. Most of Atlas' albums have been produced by TGU. She continues to focus on her Middle Eastern Eastern roots, as the titles of her albums imply: Diaspora (1995), Halim (1997) (in honour of Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez), Gedida (1998) and Ayeshteni (2001). In 1999, Atlas collaborated with David Arnold on the song "One Brief Moment." The single featured a cover version of the James Bond theme song from the film You Only Live Twice; two years earlier Atlas had collaborated with Arnold on the album Shaken and Stirred, recording the song "From Russia with Love" for the eponymous film (originally performed by Matt Monro). 2000 saw her collaborate with Jean Michel Jarre for the track "C'est La Vie" on his album Metamorphoses. The track was released as a single. Due to her French-language tracks, Atlas is now quite popular in France. In the U.K., on the other hand, she has not experienced the same amount of success. Atlas hoped that this will change with her version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You". She is not very happy about the way her music is perceived in the UK: "Someone from the NME rang us about a feature we're to do with them and said 'We don't want it to be about the multi-cultural angle'. In other words that fad is over. And I'm personally insulted... what other... angle is there for us? I get sick of it all.". In 2005, Atlas contributed the song "Just Like A Dream" (from Something Dangerous) to the charity album Voyces United for UNHCR. Her music has been used in a number of soundtracks. Her song "Kidda" was featured in the 2005 video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on Radio del Mundo. Additionally, her song "Bathaddak" is one of the songs included in the 2007 Xbox 360 exclusive video game Project Gotham Racing 4. Atlas was originally billed to star in and provide the soundtrack to the film Whatever Lola Wants, directed by Nabil Ayouch. However, shooting delays caused Atlas to only be involved in the film's soundtrack. Her song "Gafsa" (Halim, 1997) was used as the main soundtrack during the Korean film Bin-Jip (also know as 3-Iron) (2004) by Kim Ki-Duk. She participated in the piece "Light of Life (Ibelin Reprise)" for the soundtrack of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. Atlas, the lead singer in Transglobal Underground and solo artist, uses her multi-ethic background when singing lyrics a hybrid of culture and the Arabic world. She personally calls herself a “human Gaza Strip,” reflecting her diverse background and thoughts relating to the Muslim and Jewish world. For example, her lyrics say “Why are we fighting/When we’re all together/Let’s return to peace/Let’s make peace, we are brothers” (from her song “Laysh Nata’arak”). In her music, Atlas makes many political statements regarding Islam and Judaism and often takes a middle ground approach advocating for peace and harmony. Moreover, she personally considers herself a Muslim and phrases for the Quran are intertwined in her lyrics. In 2003, she released Something Dangerous, a solo album of contrasts and collaborations, in which she zips Middle Eastern music straight to the heart of current UK pop, pulling in as she does so dance music, rap, drum'n'bass, RandB, Hindi pop, film music and French chanson. The success of her earlier work, both in the Middle East and in the West, including a top ten hit in France, has shown just how alluring a musical bridging of the divide can be; the exotic Arabic scales, rhythms and textures open up new horizons for 4/4-entrapped western pop and create possibilities for the enormous and varied Middle Eastern music scene to communicate outside itself. For a while, at least, there were signs of that happening in France when, alongside crossover success for raï singer Khaled and others, Natacha Atlas had a top ten hit with her Arabicised version of Mon Amie La Rose, and won Best Female Singer at the Victoire de la Musique Awards, France's equivalent of the Brits. Of course, at present the divide needs bridging more than ever before. As ex-President of Ireland Mary Robinson, who in 2001 appointed Atlas Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Conference Against Racism, put it: "She embodies the message that there is strength in diversity, that our differences - be they ethnic, racial or religious - are a source of riches to be embraced rather than feared." Even her fan website reflects Atlas’s personal identification with Egypt and the Arabic culture. During an interview with Muslim Wake Up! Online magazine, Atlas talks about her identification with her European and Arabic roots by saying “There will always be two identities living within me: Arabic and European. When I was very young, I tried to ignore the Arabic side, my father’s side, because I saw it as foreign. But something happened in my late teens. I was at a nightclub in Brussels and I heard Arabic music, and I knew then that there was something inside of me that I wanted to go back to. So I ended up going to the other extreme. But as you mature, you realize that you have both inside you. That’s how God made me. These days I dream in two languages, and not a day goes by when I don’t end up using Arabic” In 2007, Atlas collaborated with Belinda Carlisle for Belinda's 7th album Voila. She contributed additional vocals on songs "Ma Jeunesse Fout Le Camp," "La Vie En Rose", "Bonnie et Clyde" and "Des Ronds Dans L'Eau." Voila was released via Rykodisc in the U.K. on 5 February, 2007 and in the U.S. the following day. |
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