I came across Saliah’s Instagram account on a random Tuesday while doom scrolling and stopped in my tracks. I was mesmerized for a couple of minutes while I listened to a remix of Arkab El Hantoor by Saad El Soghayar. The beat hit the sweet spot, but it was clear that Saliah’s energy ignited something in the audience that made me want to know everything about her.
Saliah is a music producer, DJ and creative practitioner and has been selling out headline shows internationally for a while now. “My work has always been involved in an eclectic range of music, design and artistic direction that has a sense of purpose and storytelling. My work can and has taken many forms of artistic expression. I love collaboration and I’m always invested in working to build community.” she explains.
She was born in Kuwait and raised between Kuwait and the UK. Music was a huge part of of her life growing up, even in Kuwait. “Miami band is the soundtrack to my childhood and I still play their songs to feel that nostalgic joy whenever I’m feeling down,” she tells us. After leaving Kuwait, she was quickly introduced to the underground music scene, and started mixing drum and bass on vinyl at the tender age of 15. Her cousins would always make her mixtapes during her visits back to Kuwait with the latest Arabic tracks so she could stay current with trending songs. Sometimes they’d mix it up with their favorite Ajnabi tracks on the same mixtape, which was the norm for many kids. We easily switch between listening to Arabic and Ajnabi. “For us diaspora kids, a lot of us stuck to listening to Arabic music from the nineties and 2000’s, and this has been the inspiration for most of my remixes. I’ve used nostalgic tracks and transformed them into club tracks influenced by UK and global sounds,” Saliah said.
A career in the music industry was never a clear goal for her as a child. She considered many different options but was drawn to the arts and graduated with a bachelor’s in Graphic Design at the Cambridge School of Art and specialized in Arabic calligraphy and typography. But in her spare time, she was DJing, playing instruments and danced a style called Body Popping. “I guess I had pressure from my family to follow a more conventional career path, so I worked as a creative director for many years but pursued my hobbies consistently. When the pandemic hit, I took that opportunity to really focus on learning a new skill; music production. That’s what changed the game for me, being able to create remixes of Arabic music with a twist. This is what has taken me around the world and selling out headline shows internationally,” Saliah explains.
She told us about her very first gig, “It was on turntables and I was just 18. I remember asking my peers if they could help me place the needle on the vinyl because I was shaking so much. It feels very different now as I’m more confident in my art, but the nerves haven’t completely gone away. I still get nervous before every show because I really care about my craft. I used to hate the nerves but now I embrace them. Caring for what you do is an incredible thing, I now see it as a blessing, not a curse.” We’re glad she stuck with it because she inhabits a space in the music scene that speaks volumes to so many of us who are between cultures and find that we can borrow her voice.
Saliah told us how most DJs think about the journey they want to take the audience on and this fluctuates depending on the type of crowd, but she likes to experiment between reading a crowd and introducing them to new sounds that might not resonate at first but might open their minds to more underground style of music and maybe discover new producers. “I obviously center a lot of my sets around my own music production too. If you’re an artist making your own music you have to push that to the forefront and find ways to make it blend with other tracks,” she adds.
She’s still very much learning and growing, while being excited to share more of her work and discover who she can fully become in the future. “I have plans to incorporate more live elements into my performances. I hope one day I can do a set that is 100% my production and perform some of that live. I’m also looking forward to incorporating my profession as a Graphic Designer into my work which I have been doing already with an amazing 3D artist called Tasty Machine in Lebanon. I of course want to continue to pass on information and do workshops to help support the growth and introduction of more women to the industry,” she tells us. And we’re excited to see more of what she gets up to as well.
Follow @saliahgram on Instagram because the energy is magical, and perhaps find out where she’s playing next and catch a show!
