“I Want To Spread Light To The World” Elyanna is Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s January 2025 Cover Star
There aren’t many 22-year-olds who can claim they’ve ignited a cultural movement. Fully embracing her Arabic roots, Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna is redefining pop with purpose – and the world is listening
When Elyanna was young, she would come home from school and immediately raid her mother’s wardrobe for costumes. She would set up the microphone and speaker system in her living room and start singing for her family, sometimes for up to six hours. “I would do a whole performance,” she says. “I was really dreaming big. I had to be a singer.”
But even that ambitious little girl could not have imagined what she would achieve, nor how quickly. At just 22, the Chilean-Palestinian musician is a superstar, blazing one new trail after the next for Arabic performers with hits like Ganeni and Mama Eh that have crossed over into the English-speaking market like never before.
“I feel like it all starts with taking a risk,” she explains. “I decided to sing in Arabic when that was the most random thing for everybody else around me. I’m just embracing who I am. I was born and raised in Nazareth, Palestine and I moved [to the US] when I was 15 so the culture was fully in me. I was not afraid to bring my culture anywhere in the world. And even though it was really tough and a lot of people didn’t believe in it and didn’t think it was cool, I just kept going. I kept fighting until I got what I wanted, and this is still going. It’s about making sure I have the right people around me. I always say, I cannot afford non-believers.”
If her team is full of believers, so too are her audiences, who cannot get enough of her distinctive sound, a melting pot of influences from Latin America, North Africa, traditional Arabic folksong, reggaeton, pop and jazz – “I feel like I’ve really got no rules. I never want to feel boxed at all in anything that has to do with art.” But it is Middle Eastern pride that dominates her live shows and aesthetic and now, when she looks out into a crowd, she sees hundreds of versions of herself reflected back at her: “I see it in front of my eyes. I see how people come on theme – on the Elyanna theme! I see them with their coins, with their henna, with their curls, white lace – all these details. I see a community and, to me, as an artist, that inspires me more than anything. I want to make this universe that we’re building even bigger and bigger and just let people in to experience it. Have a taste of it, you know?”
Her world domination has been rapid. When she played at Coachella in 2023, she made history as both the first Palestinian performer at the festival and the first to play a full set in Arabic. In 2024, her US TV debut saw her become the first Arabic performer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And after appearing with Coldplay on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and featuring on the track We Pray alongside Little Simz, Burna Boy and TINI, she is beginning 2025 with her biggest shows yet, opening for the band’s World of Spheres tour in Abu Dhabi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and North America.
On the eve of the first night in Abu Dhabi, she is fizzing with anticipation but admits to a few nerves. “I’m actually really excited to see my set being done in a stadium,” she says. “To see my music being played there, my dancers, our culture. I’m honestly so grateful.” It’s not just the size of the audience but the fact that after spending most of last year performing to Western fans, this is something of a Middle Eastern homecoming. “I’m going to be able to speak and sing in my own language and a lot of people are going to understand it,” she says, beaming. “I’m in my place, you know?! I’m so ready. I can’t wait to share energy with them… And I also can’t wait to see the Coldplay concert again! I’ve seen it like four times already and I still get excited. After I do my set, I’m gonna be watching.”
Dressed in a cosy hoodie and sipping an iced coffee for our interview, Elyanna off-duty is a warm, chatty and down-to-earth presence. On stage though, she is a force of nature, captivating in flowing white gowns and tumbling curls. “I always say that it would be really dangerous if the Elyanna that’s on stage is the Elyanna that’s in real life,” she admits. “I feel like I’m a bit aggressive on stage. It’s not always really my character, but on stage is the best time to do that because nobody can tell you anything. Nobody can judge you. You can do whatever you want and you can leave it on stage and after I come back from that, I feel like I need to get back to myself.”
Coldplay and Chris Martin, she says, have created a performance space that makes her feel “really safe” to express herself. “I just feel like we have the same kind of beliefs,” she says. “We really do want to spread hope and light to the world with our music and our art… They just have such a good heart. I feel like, as a young artist, it couldn’t be a better match. We have such a connection when it comes to the music as well. They love sad music and I do too! A lot of my music is uplifting but I feel like there’s always a vulnerable side that I never want to hide. I always make sure that I’m really, truly honest.”
Releasing her debut album Woledto (I am Born) last year was the opportunity she had been waiting for to put everything out there for her fans. Recorded in her “little humble” living room studio with her brother Feras who is her pianist and creative director, she co-wrote several tracks with her mother, who is a poet, and one song features a sample of an old video of her grandfather singing at a wedding. “It’s the first time I showed a layer of myself that I’ve never shown before,” she says.
But the collaboration with her family is not new – her loved ones have been essential to the Elyanna project since those early days of after-school singing. As children, she and her siblings would stage photo shoots, shot by Feras and styled by her sister Tali, who continues to style her to this day. Now, she says, “I feel like we’re doing the same things, just on a bigger scale. I don’t feel like any of that has changed which I find very beautiful. And I don’t want to ever change that – that hustle.”
When she was 15, the whole family uprooted their lives in Nazareth and moved to Los Angeles so Elyanna could pursue music. The transition was “definitely not easy.” She struggled to fit in at school, didn’t have many friends and filled her time with Spanish classes and choir rehearsals. But at the weekends, the family would drive to the music studio and after attracting the attention of Canadian singer and producer Nasri, she was introduced to the Lebanese-Canadian record executive Wassim ‘Sal’ Slaiby who ultimately signed her to Universal Arabic Music in 2021.
It was then that she took that big risk: singing in Arabic. “Sometimes things come from the skies to you and inspire you,” she says. “I don’t know why I was brave in that moment; I just was brave. That’s something that comes from I don’t know where. I can never explain it.” That the risk has paid off and allowed her to cross over with Western audiences in a way that no Arabic artist has before her is, she believes, down to confidence and being part of the “rebellious” Gen Z. “Even when we moved to the US, a lot of people were Arabs but they weren’t so proud of being Arabs,” she remembers. “They told me stories about being in school and being shy to show what they were eating because it was zaatar and labneh, food an Arab mum would make. They would hide these things. I feel like to break that, you’ve got to be bold. We don’t have time to play, really! That’s the attitude – just being vocal and proud of who you are. Confidence is key… I remember how I was inspired by certain artists and how confident they were. I want to be that person for other people.”
Although she is officially based in LA, Elyanna’s hectic touring schedule means she spends most of her time on the road. Home, she says, is wherever her family are and “always Palestine and Chile.” Expressing her pride in that heritage, and incorporating it into her act, comes naturally to her, but while she recognises the significance, particularly of championing Palestine in this moment, she is keen to emphasise the sheer joy of sharing her culture with the world: “I try my best not to take it so seriously. I want to make it fun and I want to make it enjoyable for everybody. I get a lot of questions where it’s like ‘do you feel you have a lot of responsibility as a Palestinian to represent?’ and actually I don’t feel that way. I feel really proud and that’s it!”
Even so, with political events back home over the last 18 months, Elyanna has found it more important than ever to celebrate her homeland while trying her best to stay positive. “All the time I want to speak about it. Even if nothing was going on, I would speak about my people and land… We have to be strong because we don’t ever want people to forget about us,” she says.
At the outbreak of the war, she postponed her tour, her design collaborations have donated proceeds to victims, and when asked about her hopes for 2025, she doesn’t hesitate: “I’m hoping for a better time for Palestine. I’m hoping for them to not go through more war. This is for the whole Middle East. I really hope in Lebanon, in Syria, in Palestine, that things become more peaceful. Not seeing kids and mums struggling, families tearing apart.”
Last year, she expressed this through song with Olive Branch, co-written with her mother and brother, pleading for peace in their homeland. “Art lives for so long,” she says. “Writing that with my mum and my brother is the most personal thing ever because we all experienced Palestine. We all were born and raised there. It was very simple how it was written: my brother was on the keys and singing the melody and we just started writing together.”
Again, it is evident that while the crowds and venues might get bigger and the fandom more ardent, Elyanna is glued to the core values that have always guided her as an artist, from her support system to her unwillingness to take the easy route. “It’s important for me to always put myself through challenges. If at any time it feels easy or comfortable, I always break it right away,” she says. “Because I feel it grounds me a lot. It could be as simple as learning new choreography that is so hard and it humbles me. Or a song that I had to really work for to get right.”
Perhaps this is why she will not settle for simply being a hugely successful musician, but is more interested in creating a movement – the “universe” she mentioned earlier. “It’s not only about the music; it’s about the whole world of it… I see it as a bigger mission, I would say. A bigger purpose.” Even this moment of allowing herself to take a deep breath and enjoy achieving her teenage dream of playing with Coldplay – “I take a picture in my mind and just save it so I’m always remembering these moments and how beautiful they are” – is just the precursor to her next move. Being on stage and performing live simply fuels her to get back into the studio and create “more music, more global music to unite people like that again.”
“It’s very important,” she concludes, “to always leave the ego aside and make sure that we are focused. Yes, enjoy it, smell the flowers, but we keep going until we get to where we need to get.” Wherever that final destination might be, it’s hard to imagine anything stopping her.
Lead image credits: Tiffany Knot Double Row Necklace in Yellow Gold with Diamonds; Tiffany Knot Drop Earrings in Yellow Gold with Diamonds, POA, both Tiffany & Co. Elsa Peretti Bone Cuff in Yellow Gold, POA, Tiffany & Co. Dress, POA, Myat
Photographer: Mariano Vivanco at TODAY Mgmt. Stylist: Jordan Kelsey at Canvas Represents. Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Creative Direction: Paul Solomons. Hair: Masayoshi Fujita at Of Substance. Make-Up: Joey Choy. Manicurist: Naima Coleman. Movement Director: Rhys Kosakowski. Senior Producer: Steff Hawker. Production: Brand Neu Productions. Head of Production: Juni De Marcos. Executive Producer: Amelia Heritage. Production Assistant: Gloria Cialfi. Mariano Vivanco Studio Manager: Mario Szabo. Stills Post Production: Mario Seyer. First Photo Assistant: Mario Álvarez. Second Photo Assistant: Tom Lombard. Digital Technician: Cavit Erginsoy. Stylist’s Assistants: Maszia Oettgen, Hannah Cohen, Erin Duxbury, Zoha Amal Khan, Amy Cundill. Hair Assistant: Saya Hashimoto