Rasha Nahas | concert

What?

A concert by Rasha Nahas—a singer, composer, guitarist, and actress whose distinctive musical style stems from her classical guitar training and her experiences on the Haifa underground scene. The artist weaves together the traditional and popular sounds of her homeland with the raw energy of electric rock, treating music as a space for exploring identity, memory, and belonging.

Her 2021 debut album, *Desert*, was a personal chronicle of her migration from Haifa to Berlin. Two years later, “Amrat” was released—Nahas’s first album with lyrics in Arabic. Recorded at 67 Studio in the occupied Golan Heights with musicians from the Palestinian indie scene, the album explores the tension between city and countryside, and between different places and ways of life.

Rasha Nahas has performed in Europe, South America, the United Kingdom, North Africa, and West Asia. She has performed at events such as the Glastonbury Festival, Sziget, WOMEX, SIM São Paulo, the Palestine Music Expo, and the Berlinale.

Rasha Nahas’s concert is the second event of the musical evening on the outdoor stage. Rasm Almashan will perform at 5:00 p.m., Rasha Nahas at 6:30 p.m., and SHKOON at 8:00 p.m.

Who?

Rasha Nahas—a Palestinian singer, composer, guitarist, and actress living in Berlin. She blends alternative rock with Arab musical traditions, creating songs in which her personal story intersects with questions of memory, identity, migration, and belonging.

In addition to her solo work, she composes and writes music for film and theater. She has collaborated with, among others, the Berlin performance scene and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and has composed music for short films, feature films, and documentaries. In 2024, she made a guest appearance in the second season of the series “We Are Lady Parts.” She is also one of the first recipients of the Bertha Foundation Artivism Award.

For Whom?

For those who enjoy music that transcends genre boundaries—from alternative and electronic rock to contemporary Arabic sounds—but also for those interested in how music can explore themes of migration, memory, language, and life across different places. Rasha Nahas does not view tradition and modernity as opposites. Her music may therefore appeal both to those familiar with the Palestinian or, more broadly, the Arab music scene, as well as to audiences encountering her work for the first time.

Why is it worth it?

Rash Nahas’s biography takes her from Haifa through the occupied Golan Heights to Berlin, but her music cannot be reduced to a story of moving between points on a map. “Desert” grew out of the experience of migration, “Amrat” marked a turn toward the Arabic language, and in both cases, her personal story became a way of questioning what it actually means to belong to a place, a language, or a community.

This perspective is particularly important for the Łódź of Many Cultures Festival. Rasha Nahas demonstrates that it is possible to draw simultaneously from Palestinian musical heritage, the Haifa underground, and electric rock, without reducing any of these experiences to an exotic gimmick.

Her concert has another important dimension. At a time when Palestine so often appears in the public sphere solely through the language of conflict, violence, and geopolitics, Nahas brings the perspective of an artist and her own narrative voice to the Palestinian experience. She does not ignore its political and historical context, but she allows us to hear something more—an individual biography, memory, language, artistic independence, and the need for self-determination.

Availability

The concert will take place on the outdoor stage at the Dialogue Center in Survivors’ Park.

Photos

Rasha Nahas,