Israa Shalaby
Israa Shalaby is a Palestinian Singer/Songwriter/Performer/visual artist. Shalaby was born and raised in the ancient city of Acre in the Galilee region of Occupied Palestine. In 2023 she relocated to NYC to thrive and find a safe-haven to build her own career in music. From an early age Shalaby’s was exposed to a very versatile and rich library of music and poetry. Her family wrote and toured their own original music worldwide and are considered to be artistic pioneers in Acre. Shalaby has developed her own unique and versatile style of singing and songwriting which reflects the wide diversity of genres in music that she was exposed to and influenced by in her musical and writing journey.
In 2022 Shalaby began her path as a solo artist. Her sound is an exploration of minimal sonic textures, musical scales, rhythms and frequencies. Using her own voice, keyboard , shamanic drum, other indigenous instruments, pre-recorded sounds from the natural world come, Shalaby’s musical approach is a corporeal amalgamation of indigenous ,eastern and western music, classical-Arabic ambience, and a ritualistic witchy approach to performance in live shows. Her lyrics include Sufi inspired and affirmation mantras & spells that consider both the individual, hermetic and the collective life journey in an honest raw romanticism. Using symbolic metaphors in Arabic dialects like rural Levantine and Egyptian, Shalaby’s music is both an embodiment of decolonization and a spiritual tie to the environment and nature of her homelands;the addition of hypnotic English affirmation mantras are a call to action to connect the east and west through a new and hybrid indigenous music exploration.
Prior to her work as a solo artist Shalaby led and performed with The Hallways band from 2021-2023. In 2023 she released her first single Open Thy Heart , a collaboration with US-based producer Carmen Rizzo. Since relocating to the US, Shalaby has began building a dedicated fan based through regular club performance in venues across New York City such as Joe’s Pub and Barzakh Café. Shalaby graduated from the New Bulgarian University (NBU) in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. She additionally studied solfeggio singing and music theory with a vocal master in Haifa in 2017.
