Amanda Pascali – Cleopatra

Today, rising singer-songwriter Amanda Pascali shares her new single “Cleopatra,” a powerful ode to resilience, identity, and the strength of women who break barriers across borders. Inspired by Pascali’s mother, an immigrant who arrived in 1980s New York City and built a life and career from the ground up, “Cleopatra” fuses Arabic melodies, Spanish guitar, spaghetti Western soundscapes, and world folk elements to reflect the multicultural mosaic of her story.

“Cleopatra” follows Pascali’s previous singles, including a song of unrequited love, “Wake Up, Baby!,” and an ode to all-consuming love, “Amuri.”

Her new album Roses and Basil was produced by acclaimed singer-songwriter and fellow Texan Robert Ellis and will release on September 12.

“‘Cleopatra’ is a bilingual, genre-blending tribute to my mother — who was born in Egypt and journeyed to America by way of France — and to every woman who has had to fight to make her story heard,” Pascali explains. “The song is inspired by my mother’s story, but it’s also about my responsibility as her first-born daughter to carry that story forward. The repeated line ‘I was left with the pen in my hand’ speaks to the urgency I feel, especially in this moment, to tell these stories.”

She continues, “I have had to convince many people that it is compelling to tell stories where women are at the forefront. Today, I am sharing this one: I wrote this song about my mom but it’s also about me, and every woman who came before me. In every story, there are pieces of the writer that seep in. This song celebrates my relationships, past, present, and future with the most important women in my life: my sisters, my mom, and my grandmothers in heaven. We are the main characters of this story.”

Amanda Pascali is a former Fulbright fellow endorsed by the Biden Administration’s State Department and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a current Harrington fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, who pioneered the first comprehensive project to translate and revitalize Sicilian folk songs. Her modern interpretations have captured attention online, with viral videos of her performing “La Mafia E Li Parrini” (The Mafia and the Priests), “Cu Ti Lu Dissi” (Sicilian break-up song) and “Quannu Moru” (The Day That I Die). Exploring the stories and themes in older music that still resonate today, Pascali blends folk/Americana influences with Mediterranean, Balkan, and Latin rhythms, as she delivers powerful tales of the American experience through the eyes of immigrants.

A first-generation American, Amanda Pascali’s mother was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up between Paris and New York City. She and Pascali’s father, a refugee from Communist Romania with Italian roots, met and fell in love in Brooklyn. But when their family moved from New York to Texas, Pascali struggled to fit in with her peers. “In the words of poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo, I constantly felt ‘too foreign for here, too foreign for home, and never enough for both,’” she remembers. But picking up a guitar at age 12, and later beginning her work of reinterpreting Sicilian folk music, she created a space for herself, one that has resonated with fans across the world.

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