It's Women's History Month, so we're showing some serious love from home to our favorite female artists. Pass the time at your casa, and share it with your cat, your plant and your friends on FaceTime.
I’m so happy to see you. How are you?
Honestly I’m good. Life has been really nice recently. I think it’s turning 25. I don’t know. Something in the air’s different.
Aw that’s sweet. I so agree though, I turned 25 last March and something shifted. They say that your brain fully develops then. [Laughs]
Yeah, same. When we were younger, I was so excited and we were so stimulated by the rush of being at the club, by the people, the lights, the music, but it doesn’t excite me as much anymore. I really appreciate cuddling with my boo at home or even just having dinner with my friends. A lot of people get to that stage eventually, I just never thought it’d be me.
We really used to be in there. You’re still doing Hauterageous though right?
Yeah, of course.
How’s that going?
We just did a Boiler Room so that was really major. Starting it five years ago, I never expected to continue growing it in this way, but honestly, I always knew it was going to go somewhere because everything just fell into place. And of course it’s going to go somewhere because why not? Everything I touch turns into gold! That’s kind of the philosophy you need to embrace with these kinds of things, I guess.
I love that you’re still collaborating with a lot of the same girls.
A principle of mine that I carry in life is to bring whoever’s in my circle, whoever’s important to me into everything that I do. If you trust and love the people you're around, then it's only fair that they come up with you in any way you go, especially because whatever I do for them, they're going to do for me. Loyalty to your friends will take you really, really far. People like Syana, Ciggy, Mimi, Amal, my girl Miss Chris, these girls are my literal sisters and I believe in their talent so much. It’s not just that they’re my friends, but they're also extremely talented artists, and I want them to go wherever I go because I believe in their potential just as much as I do mine.
Does Montreal gatekeep?
It’s a lot less gatekeepy than bigger cities like New York or Toronto, and that's because I feel like there's no competitiveness for gigs because rent is cheap. Now it's increasing, rent is getting a lot more expensive, but because Montreal has always been known for affordable rent, people aren't fighting for gigs. People aren't dying to get to know the right people so that they can get in the right spot to be able to make money so that they can pay rent. Rent is kind of already covered, so people just rely on art to express themselves and they have the space to do that.
You definitely still have to work your way up just like any other artist and introduce yourself and put work towards your career, but there's a lot more space for you to grow in Montreal because the community here is so small, yet so big at the same time. Everybody knows each other, so once you get your foot in, you're kind of in the world already. One thing about having a really small community is that the love that people have for each other is so genuine, and that's one thing I see in Montreal that I don't see in any other city. No matter the scene you’re a part of, if you’re in the same community, people will have your back. That's really important to me and it’s why I love living here.
Yeah that makes sense, there’s so much more competition in New York. How has Hauterageous contributed to the growth of this community you find yourself in?
Hauterageous has introduced nightlife to so many young queer and trans people who watch what we do online. They come and it’s a place where a lot of people fall in love or make friends for the first time. People move here from other cities and go to Hauterageous and forge all these new connections. It’s really cool to watch it grow and see new and young people experience that side of nightlife. When I was that age, being in spaces like that was so important to me. It’s where I met people like you and I don’t know where I’d be without these kinds of spaces.
You just had a party on December 2nd right? How was that with everything going on in Palestine right now?
It’s definitely tough, I am Palestinian, a Queer Palestinian. I am constantly battling having to create safe spaces as my job, and realizing that there is no safe space for Palestinians right now. I have lost work during this time and continue to face adversity for literally just being where I'm from. Over twenty thousand of my people, killed in Gaza. My family watches as their home gets destroyed and all I can do is ‘share my knowledge and sign petitions’. Everything kind of just feels bleh at the moment. And what makes it worse, is that none of us have time to fucking grieve properly because capitalism is real and inflation is real and people are distracted by their need to survive, to make rent. I need to be able to pay rent and sadness is no currency. Hauterageous is somewhere I try to control that narrative. It is a space that symbolizes safety, understanding and liberation. It's doing something within my capacity and relies on the ripple effect of feel good, do good. That's all I can fundamentally impact. Regardless, what will always remain true and strong, is our plight to self-determination. It is evident that no matter what and how, we fight for a free Palestine. We, the Palestinian people, will not stop, until we are free. I am not free as a queer person until I am free as a Palestinian.
What does ‘raving for resistance’ mean to you?
Raving has always been a resistance movement. People create these kinds of spaces when they’ve been marginalized in society. It’s the one place you can go to let go, forget about your day problems and be with your community sharing love, dancing and escaping.
These are all really important things in a resistance movement because if people don’t have a space to recharge, they also won’t have enough energy to fight. Raves give you a space to recharge before you wake up in the morning and go to the protest. I know that sounds crazy, you’re going to be up until six in the morning at times, but you recharge mentally. When we say raves, we're not saying crazy EDM techno festivals where people just get blasted and drunk on Spring break.
I’m a Palestinian trans DJ, so these are the spaces where I can make an impact. Doing what I do and being who I am is important to me so that other people can see it and understand that there’s no monolith to being Palestinian.
Right, the War in Gaza is also impacting Palestinian people on a global scale.
Of course the journalists, doctors and people on the ground in Gaza deserve all our respect and efforts and it’s really important to highlight their voices, but on a local scale, people like myself are important to listen to because people need to understand that it’s also artists, DJs, music producers, dancers being affected by Zionism. This work is impactful to the resistance movement and those identities are important to remember and think about when it comes to resistance. It’s more about spreading the word because there’s only so much you can do from Canada. You're complicit in so many different ways, like our tax dollars fund the IDF, so if you think of it from a pragmatic perspective, there's not that much really that we can do. Rather than just sitting here and feeling guilty about what’s going on, you can try to change the narrative around Palestine by educating yourself and others.
Yeah, it’s sad to see that there’s still so much stigma around Palestinians, Muslim people and Arabs in the world, especially in the West.
Yeah, exactly. People love to throw around, How can you as a queer person support Palestine? If you go there, they’ll just shoot you, and it’s not true. That’s just an Islamophobic tactic to influence people’s perceptions of the Middle East.
As if the majority of America isn’t still deeply homophobic and transphobic.
Exactly, but people don’t give the same grace to Palestine or other Arab countries even though queer people have existed there for millenia.
Girl, they were throwing it back when Jesus was around.
No… like, on Jesus, darling. People don’t allow the same grace to the Middle East because the West wants something out of it. Educating yourself, others, talking to your friends, to colleagues, your family members, whether they agree with you or not, or are Islamophobic or Zionist, it’s doing something. There's a snowball effect to information and knowledge. Once somebody knows something and it’s passed on, it’s eventually going to get into the right hands to enact change.
Tell me about growing up in Qatar.
It was really interesting, I was surrounded by my people and culture and for that I’m forever grateful to have experienced because it has instilled so many beautiful values in me that I don’t see in the West. At the same time, I was always visibly queer, even as a kid, and this put me in really difficult and uncomfortable situations. I was heavily bullied at school, and still have to hide so many parts of myself from my family. I feel disposable to the people that helped shape me. My identity is all I have, truly. Something I think a lot of Arab queer kids relate to. This experience could have easily gone left if I held on to it differently, and sometimes it does. I am really strong and super smart and I’m grateful that this path shaped me into the person I’ve always wanted to be, but the sad reality of it all is that my strength and awareness are both survival tactics.
How does that inform your career in nightlife and the music that you make?
It informs everything. It's one of the only sources of true inspiration I have. I have connected with my inner child and learned to make it happy doing things I love. And what I love is making music and creating spaces for people to feel safe. I have learned to listen to myself and for that my trajectory is tangible. At the same time, my upbringing instilled the worst, most horrendous feelings of anxiety in me. I am constantly having to remind myself that I am worthy of love and friendships. Because I was once disposable to the people I love the most, I am now convinced I am a disposable person. As a result, in my adult life, it’s hard for me to trust and be vulnerable beyond what I've deemed comfortable. I have come to understand recently that I need to practice surrendering to the lack of control I actually have over these patterns, and channeling this energy into what I create is how I manage that kind of intrusive thinking. My upbringing is nightlife, is music, is love, is trust, is sadness, is art, is liberating. You can hear all this in my music, if you listen hard enough it's there. You can also see this at Hauterageous, my references are true and clear.
Are you coming out with anything soon?
I’m actually releasing another single with my girl Syana! It's being worked on as we speak and will be out on February 2nd.
Exciting!
Yeah. I have focused a lot of my time on learning how to produce better this year so hopefully you’ll get to see a bit of that in the next single. It’s called “Fuck”, featuring Syana.
I can’t wait to hear it.
Do you feel in alignment this year?
Yeah... I'd say so.
Why's that?
Because I worked for it! I’ve trained myself to listen to my gut, to understand that voice in my head that tells me what I should do and then know when to do it. If I need to cut a bad habit, I’m not afraid to do it anymore. And you know what changed it? There was a moment when me and my friends went to this techno festival called Best Out of Town, and we were all on shrooms, just having a good time, and there was a river with a bridge. We all climbed up and it was actually really high but we wanted to jump in the water. I was really afraid but in my head I was like, Okay girl. This is the life lesson that you're learning at this moment: you're really afraid, but if you do it, you're going to feel really good afterwards and if you stop yourself, you're just going to miss out.
Wow, very true too.
You never know what's on the other side. I jumped, and I was really happy about being in the water, about taking that step and being fearless. Once I got a glimpse of what being fearless feels like, I held onto it. Now, I try to apply it to every single thing that I do. In the past, there've been things I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t, but I’d convinced myself it wasn’t out of fear, being afraid of change.
Once you push through that fear everything opens up. I have a boyfriend now, I feel very happy with what I’m doing, I have a new job, I got a major collaboration with Hauterageous, but it’s also about doing the work for others, making sure you give back. Remind your friends how much you love them, support them when you can, because you can work on yourself as much as you want, but if you’re still a shit person to the people around you, then you aren’t going to get what you want because what you give is what you receive.
Has music helped you get there?
For sure. I mean, I've struggled with communicating with people my whole life. I was always a really weird kid. I got bullied most of my life. My school was one building of people from kindergarten until grade 12. It was nonstop, all the time so I learned to hold back from communicating who I truly am to people who thought I was too much or too weird or too quirky or too loud. Music has allowed me to communicate in a way that I wasn’t able to with words and I connect with my inner child the most when I produce music. That’s magical in my opinion.
The fact that I’m here having grown up in Qatar with a strict Muslim upbringing, losing my dad at a very young age. I’ve faced so much and it’s really interesting to see how the dots are connecting.
Do you believe in fate?
Of course. I think that fate is just confirmation. Everybody that you interact with is, in some way or another, forever bound to you for the rest of your life. There’s a reason you meet the people that you do, because one day you’re going to come together to do something that’s going to evolve both of you, teach you a life lesson that you need to learn, or make you feel something you’ve never felt before. You never know what could happen.
Yeah, I also think it comes down to our choices.
Definitely, the way you’ve learned to choose things and what you choose influences the direction your life takes too. I mean, that’s listening to your gut.
What is your gut saying right now?
Time for dinner darling, she's hungry!
Oh same!
Seriously though, the thing about life is that we are given this free will to make decisions, but each decision that we make has its own reality, it has its own life that you’ll live from choosing to act on it. Your gut is the universe’s way of clueing you in. No matter who you talk to, everybody knows what’s right and wrong inside, it’s things like anxiety, depression, mental health, what you’ve learned, that influences your choices. Listening to that voice inside yourself so that fate can intervene is a really cool concept and it’s possible for everybody.
Do you feel like this internal sense of trust comes through in your work?
Yes, in a way. At first glance, I don't think my music gives you an in-depth perspective on someone like me. When you listen to my music at first, you think it's funny, kooky, DIY, loud. It’s more of a reflection of how I interject the cultures I’m around into my music. If you listen past the silliness, you’ll find true expression and intelligence. There are a lot of references that take time to gather. And once you see those things, that’s the message that I want to convey to the world. I want everybody to express themselves through their art, and to have good references, because being intentional in the art that you do is really important for where you want to go. I want to take myself where I'm headed.
The singer-songwriter joined office to discuss her creative processes, the drain of overthinking, and why her most intense criticism is directed at herself. Read our conversation below.
Hi Samaria! Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I'm really excited to be able to talk to another Bay Area native.
Hey! That’s sick, what part of the Bay?
Oakland, I grew up right by Lake Merritt. What part are you from?
I lived in Oakland, but I was mostly raised in Berkeley. My dad lived off High Street, but I always went to school in Berkeley because he didn't want me going to school in Oakland. I went to Berkeley High. I always try to correct that when people just say I'm from Oakland because I'm probably actually more from Berkeley.
I feel you. Technically I was born in Berkeley. I feel like everybody in the area was born at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley back then —
I was just about to ask, were you born at Alta Bates? That’s crazy. Small world, very small world.
Indeed! Can you tell me a little bit about the early days of your relationship with music? Did you know that you wanted to be a musician when you were a kid, or was that something that came along later?
Oh, 100%. I never really saw my life going any other way than me being an artist. Both of my parents were really influenced by music and both of them were chasing a music career when they were younger. My biological mom was a singer, and my dad was in a rap group with him and his cousins, all from Oakland too. He's like, a business, corporate man, basketball coach now, so those days are behind him.
But yeah, I was just grew up around a lot of neo-soul, and I was really influenced by Justin Timberlake's Justified album and Aaliyah when I was a kid. I just always wanted to be that person singing heartbreak records in the rain when I grew up.
I love it. What was your first tool or instrument? Was it singing first, or did you start off playing something?
It was actually singing and songwriting. I started writing really stupid songs in the sixth grade. That's around the time I started to realize I may have had a gift for it, because my cousins used to hype me and tell everybody that I was gonna be like a famous singer one day. They made me feel like I was really good at it, so I kept at it.
One of my first songs that I ever wrote was on this keyboard I had been gifted by my neighbor who was moving. On the old electric keyboards, you could press a button and it would just give you some kicks and like the most basic drum loop ever. I made a song about my sixth grade crush. From there, I was like, Yeah, I can do this.
Shoutout the sixth grade crush! Sparked something great.
And like, I recorded my very first song ever to like a Chip The Ripper instrumental. He's a super underground rapper and I got it off YouTube and a friend of my mom's used to come by the house to record her and just set up his equipment in the kitchen and any, and I have been begging me to let me record and I was like, I want to make a song, I want to make a song.
But they have finally let me make one. And like, that was like, when I realized that like, oh, like recording really isn't as crazy as I thought it was like, I thought you had to be in like a multimillion dollar studio. And once I realized that it's just as easy as having the right equipment and setting it up in any room and soundproofing it somehow I was like, Oh, yeah, it's up. It's up.
So I ended up making a SoundCloud account. I put out my very first song ever in my junior year of high school. I was 16. The song was called “Love Better.” I took it off SoundCloud a long time ago but I still have it in my email, and sometimes I go back to it and I'm like, Oh, I sound like a baby.
I mean, you were a baby in a lot of ways! We all gotta start somewhere. Do you write all of your own songs in full, or do you ever collaborate with other songwriters?
Everything that I’ve put out thus far has been all me lyrically. Within the past year and a half, I would say, I've started working with other artists with the pen. Normally it's just like me and a producer, but I started to feel like I was hitting a wall with my writing and I was like, You know what, maybe I should be open to working with others.
It's not that I ever turn my nose up at working with other people. I think that I had this block up, because everything I write is from such a personal place and I really treat my music like it's like my child. You know what I mean? Like, I don't always feel like other people can successfully relay the message that is coming from something that is so personal to me. It's kind of narrowed down for me who I actually feel comfortable allowing into that vulnerable space of mine, and I think that the people I have recently chosen to sit down and write with also share very similar experiences to me and also handled similar situations the same way that I would.
I’m also curious, when you write songs, do you write with melody first or lyrics first?
Usually the way I do it is I kind of freestyle, like a rapper. So there's definitely words involved when I'm doing top lines and stuff. And there will usually be something that I say within that where I'm like, oh, that's cool, and I'll run with that and build the song from there. Very, very rarely do I ever sit down and like, write a full song out and then go in the booth and record. I'll just go freestyle, pick something that I like and then just start rhyming from there off the top of my head.
It feels more authentic that way because you're not thinking too much about it. I hate thinking. When I feel like I'm starting to think too much about the songs that I'm writing, I always end up not liking what I make. I don't know what that's about. I've always been that way.
Is your writing always or mostly autobiographical? How much of it is based on your own experiences?
I throw myself under the bus in my songs more than I do anybody else. I will go in on myself. I've noticed that, like, the last few people to write about me use the words “self reflective,” and I think that's putting it nicely. I really have a habit of tearing myself apart in my music. It's not always in a negative way — even with this project that I'm getting ready to release, it's like taking a look inside myself and picking myself apart in order to be able to do better.
Speaking of the project, I was able to listen to it ahead of time. It's beautiful. Congratulations. From your ep last year to now, did it feel different in any way, both in the process of creating it and also now in the process of building up to the release?
That's a good question. With every project that I release, there's always growth, of course. But I'm learning now, listening back, each project displays a different type of growth within my life.
The last one — I was going through a really bad breakup, and I think that the songs on that for the most part were really geared towards getting over that person, that one individual, and getting myself through that breakup.
Now I've kind of stepped back from the situation and looked at it from angles that I hadn't before. and like I said earlier, like, just really tearing myself apart as opposed to the situation itself and dissecting myself in the way that I chose to handle things in the past. Not even just in that relationship, but just in my life.
I love that. Final question: is there a song or an aspect of this project that you are the most excited or the most proud of for people to hear?
Yeah! I kind of stopped listening to the project for a while because I wanted it to feel new to me again when it came out, so I gave my ears a break. But I listened to it again the other day, just out of excitement because the release is approaching quickly. One of the songs that wasn't necessarily a favorite of mine just became a favorite of mine. It's called “Three Rings.”
There’s a movie I watched called Good Luck Chuck, about a guy who, I think he gets cursed as a young boy and the woman who cursed him pretty much made it so that every woman who sleeps with him will end up marrying the person that they sleep with him.
So women realize that he's this good luck charm to getting an engagement ring. At first he's like, “Oh this is great, all these girls want to sleep with me.” But then after a while, he becomes lonely because nobody actually wants to be with him. He ends up meeting this girl that he just absolutely falls in love with, but he doesn’t want to sleep with her because he doesn't want to lose her to someone.
Many times in my life when I end up dating somebody, I’ve felt like they always end up finding their forever person after me. So I wrote this song called “Three Rings.” And in the song, I say “that's Three Rings given to someone who should be me.”
And like, I never realized how deep that song hit for me until I just listened back to it a couple of days ago and the lyrics just started hitting me differently. So, yeah, “Three Rings” would probably be my favorite right now.
Watch the new music video below.
