Music Spotlight - Nemahsis
Making time in today's blog post to highlight a musician whose growth has been wonderful and heartening to witness, with a brilliant integrity and commitment to authentic artistic vision and values.
Nemahsis is an independent singer-songwriter whose music is a potent blend of powerfully versatile vocals, hauntingly emotional lyrics, and just a touch of playful cheekiness. Striking visuals, often making use of stark colour contrasts and bold fashion styles, also accompany many of her music videos. As a Palestinian-Canadian and hijabi Muslim woman, Nemahsis' music has explored themes like tokenism in the beauty industry (reflective of her beginnings as a creator of beauty and fashion videos on TikTok), her uphill battle to be an artist in the music industry, and more. Understandably, there is an undercurrent of feeling and being perceived like an underdog in these tracks, and it's heartbreaking to think of just how frustrating these fights have been for Nemahsis to have to navigate. We all know that one of the best parts of an underdog story is when they finally triumph and get their deserved win, but it still means you first have to find a way to survive everything else beforehand.
And Nemahsis has certainly survived a lot in her journey as a hijabi Palestinian-Muslim artist just in the last few years alone. A few days into the escalation of genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza following Oct 7, 2023, Nemahsis announced that she had been suddenly dropped by her music label. With a full-length album already completely finished and on the cusp of being released, it was an absolute insult, clearly blatant cowardice on the label's part, and just plain devastating. I would highly recommend listening to Nemahsis speak about it (and the entire conversation, really) in this interview on CBC's "Q With Tom Power". But thankfully, Nemahsis didn't let any of it stop her. After all further attempts to find other labels willing to support her did not pan out, she and her team resolved to release the album independently. That album, Verbathim, was released on September 13, 2024, and it is amazing.
I had the incredible fortune of being able to attend a Nemahsis concert this year while she was on her headlining tour. Hearing her perform live, her voice sounded just as amazing on the stage as it does in the album. It was a treat to witness live performances of some of my favourite tracks like "i wanna be your right hand", pulsing with laid-back guitar and musings on what it means to be of service, or the jubilant anthem for Palestinian pride and liberation that "Stick of Gum" has become. Watching Nemahsis do an encore of "Stick of Gum" while waving a giant Palestinian flag as all of us in the crowd went wild, that was a moment I'm grateful I got to experience.
Adding some bonus encouragement here to go watch the music video for "Stick of Gum", it's so, so beautiful. Filmed in Nemahsis' hometown of Jericho, Palestine and featuring her family members, it is an exquisitely joyous love letter to her roots and community. And then maybe check out some interviews, including the one linked earlier, where Nemahsis talks about how it even got made, because wow, what a saga.
After she won Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Alternative Album of the Year at the 2025 Juno Awards earlier this year, I'm hopeful that more people will continue to experience Nemahsis and her music, and to give her the flowers she deserves.