Reem Kelani

Kelani was born in Manchester, England, the daughter of Yousef Zaid Kelani (1925– ), a physician and endocrinologist from Yabad near Jenin in the West Bank, and Yusra Sharif Zu'bi (1931–2004), a homemaker from Nazareth in the Galilee.

She was brought up and educated in Kuwait, graduating from Kuwait University in Biology.

Kelani is a maternal cousin of Haneen Zoabi, the first Palestinian Israeli woman to be elected to the Knesset, a relative of Shawkat Kelani, a prominent doctor and co-founder of An-Najah University in Nablus, and the great-niece of Wajih al-Kaylani, Shaykh al-Islam of the Philippines.

Kelani started singing at the age of four, and she recalls it as one of the most profound experiences of her life.

Reem Kelani (born 1963) is a British Palestinian musician, born in Manchester, England.

Initially influenced by the jazz music her father played on his record player, her interest in Palestinian music was sparked by the music at a family wedding in her maternal home in Galilee in the 1970s.

In Kuwait in 1988, Kelani organised and led a major fundraising show called "I Got Rhythm" for the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, MAP, the organisation which employed Dr Pauline Cutting O.B.E. and Dr Ang Swee Chai in Bourj al-Barajneh camp in Beirut.

She continued singing as an amateur and semi-professional singer until she went professional in 1990.

She studied piano as a child, exposing her to Western classical music, of which her father was an avid listener.

Her father’s early fascination with Fred Astaire's black-and-white films introduced Kelani to the music of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, the Jazz elements of which can be heard in her own music and in her choice of a band based around a Jazz rhythm section, alongside traditional Arabic instruments.

Kelani has spoken publicly about a turning point when, as a teenager attending a family wedding in the village of Nein outside Nazareth, she became interested in Palestinian and Arabic music.

She has also described Kuwait as "a country whose rich musical heritage remains an essential part of my personal and collective soundscape".

In 2003, Kelani performed alongside Guy Barker and his band on the BBC World Service's World Cafe.

For the programme, Kelani performed her own unique blending of George Gershwin's "The Half of It, Dearie' Blues" with traditional Palestinian singing.

She first performed in Turkey in June 2005 at the Cemal Resit Rey Concert Hall, as part of Istanbul municipality's conference on "Women from the Middle East".

Kelani's release in 2006 of her solo album Sprinting Gazelle – Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora represented the culmination of many years of research and preparation.

In January 2007, Kelani led a tour of Syria, performing twice at the Opera House in Damascus and once at the Directorate of Culture in Aleppo.

Organised by the British Council, Reem brought together for the tour a bespoke line-up comprising 3 of her UK musicians and 3 from Syria: Amir Qara Jouli (violin), Basel Rajoub (saxophones) and Simon Mreach (percussion).

Later in 2007, Kelani also undertook a commission from the Manchester International Festival to compose a 30 minute piece for performance at the Festival with the Beating Wing Orchestra comprising refugee musicians.

The resulting work, "Paradise in Strangers", explored universal themes such as migration, suffering, parting, reunion, and celebration.

It featured poetry and prose written by Reem and members of the orchestra, as well as verses by Robert Burns (A Slave's Lament) and Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Rootless).

In May 2008, Kelani produced and performed a unique arrangement of traditional Gaelic and Palestinian songs with Gaelic singer Catriona Watt.

for A’ Gharaids, a series of programmes looking at the state of Gaelic music.

A’ Gharaids was made for BBC Alba, the Gaelic television channel and presented by Mary Ann Kennedy.

In October 2008, Kelani collaborated with the Portuguese Fado singer, Liana, on a special commission for Musicport Festival, Whitby, entitled "From Palestine to Portugal".

The project was funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Visiting Arts.

It involved the mixing of Palestinian and Portuguese poetry, the verse of Mahmoud Darwish and Jose Saramago, and Arabic and Portuguese voices.

This was followed, in November 2008, by her concert at the Babylon Club in Istanbul, on the occasion of the British Council's visiting "Lure of the East" exhibition of Orientalist painting at the Pera Museum.

For this concert, Kelani and her trio were joined by Selim Sesler, the legendary Turkish gypsy clarinetist, and they performed a range of songs from Kelani's Palestinian and Egyptian repertoire.

Among the audience that day was Osman Kavala, the Turkish philanthropist and founder of Anadolu Kültür.

He saw a natural partnership between Kelani, with her representation of Palestinian culture, and Kardes Turkuler, which is one of the musical arms of the collective organization BGST.

The series was subsequently nominated for the Media Award in the MG ALBA Traditional Music Awards 2009.

The production was later reprised in a performance at the Tabernacle W11 in December 2009.

Kelani's work has adopted a notable profile in Turkey.

And so Kelani performed as a special guest with Kardes Turkuler at their June 2009 concert in the Turkcell Kuruçeşme Arena, Istanbul.

In October 2009, Kelani also performed with her Anglo-Syrian band at a major women’s festival in Nusaybin in south east Turkey.

Kelani’s association with Kardes Turkuler continued in April 2014 with a joint concert at TIM Maslak in Istanbul which attracted considerable interest in the Turkish media.

Alongside her performances with her own musicians, Kelani is a member of The Anti-Capitalist Roadshow.

It is a collective of singers and songwriters comprising Frankie Armstrong, Roy Bailey (folk singer), Robb Johnson, Sandra Kerr, Grace Petrie, Leon Rosselson, Janet Russell, Peggy Seeger, Jim Woodland, plus socialist magician, Ian Saville.

After release of her Sprinting Gazelle, Kelani began her next project focused on the Egyptian composer Sayyid Darwish.