Emel – Souty

To New York City-based musician Emel Mathlouthi, AKA EMEL, the voice will always be synonymous with power. Today, she offers a timely reminder of that potency with a new single, “Souty.” Translating to “My Voice,” the song was written during the first COVID lockdown, a period in which she was both isolated and had vocal cord trouble. “The song is a tribute to my voice,” she says, “this instrument that defines all of me.”

Growing up in Tunisia, EMEL listened to everything from classical music to Celine Dion. After performing in a metal band as a teen, she discovered Joan Baez and the quiet intensity of protest songs. “I was never drawn in the beginning to Arabic music, because I thought it was too rigid,” she says. The dictatorship she was living under was more preoccupied with persecuting activists than musicians. As she explains, “Music was liberating. It had to be revolutionary.” Though she was not free to perform, suffice it to say, EMEL — who had been writing songs since age 10 — would not be silenced.

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