RIYADH: As the profile of women continues to rise in the contemporary music industry in Saudi Arabia, and the wider Middle East, all-female rock-fusion band Seera is boldly pioneering a largely untapped psychedelic sound on the Kingdom’s local scene.
After a warm-up by DJ Haffs, the Saudi band delivered a captivating performance to an audience of more than 200 people at The Warehouse in Riyadh on Thursday night in their debut live show. The venue echoed to the unique sounds of the four-piece band: guitarist Haya, bassist Meesh, THING on drums, and Nora on lead vocals and keyboard. The audience was duly impressed.
“Throughout the whole performance, my phone was always in my pocket; I never took it out, and I never took any pictures or any videos,” Nadir Al-Fassam, lead guitarist of Saudi psychedelic punk band Sound of Ruby, told Arab News.
“I was just concentrating on the performance. The truth is that doesn’t happen a lot.”
Beyond their music, however, Seera’s greatest impact might lie in the influence they have on other Saudi women.
Meesh said: “We haven’t even launched yet and I’ve already had women come up to me and (say), ‘I’ve been picking up an instrument but I haven’t felt like I could really put myself out there until seeing you guys,’ or, ‘You guys inspired me.’”
The band hopes their live debut will encourage others to take to the stage.
“It’s still kind of a male-dominated field globally, and here, too… (as) an all-woman band, we really want to support women to be more out there and to take up space,” said Haya.
The story of the band began a year ago, when Haya met sisters Meesh and Nora through Instagram and they got together for a jam session.
“Within a minute, we had written a song, and when Nora also came and met up with us we were just going and going,” Haya told Arab News.
Nora added: “Me and Meesh started playing music a long time ago. Since we’re sisters, we’ve always felt there was a missing piece. We were looking for a band and people to connect with through our music. We were on the hunt.
“When Haya reached out to Meesh, it was the perfect opportunity to form a band, especially since our music tastes are very similar. We like uniqueness in music and we love diversity in sound.”
Drummer THING was the missing link, she said, and they met her at a music event later that summer.
Meesh said: “I’ve played with a lot of people before but when I played with the girls, I expressed myself freely in a way that I’m not used to. I felt myself progress … Playing together really helped us all develop ourselves as musicians, as people, as a band.”
The group’s sound, which combines their interests in jazz, funk, soul and Turkish psychedelic rock, is reminiscent of performers from the 1970s such as Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin, but they add their own spin by infusing it with Arabic and English influences.
“When I started writing lyrics, I used to always write in English but I wanted to get more in touch with my culture,” said Nora.
“So, I really looked into the writing process and I ended up loving it. Arabic Fus’ha (classical Arabic) is beautiful, and I wanted to incorporate that more into the music. That’s when we mixed both languages together.”
Some of their lyrics also feature Ammiya, or colloquial Arabic, in an effort to modernize the sound while remaining true to their roots and upbringing.
“We really wanted to represent an original sound,” said THING. “It was really important for us to focus on our culture, on local Arabic sounds mostly, and then mixing it together because we’re influenced by a lot of things.”
As they performed original tracks on Thursday night, including “Woman,” “Junoon Almal” (“Money Craze or Greed”) and “Khaleek Ba’eed” (“Stay Away”), the band really played to the crowd, complete with free-flowing moves and headbanging, often inviting the audience to clap along. “We’re about to take you guys to dreamland,” Nora told them between songs.
The crowd went wild when Seera concluded their set with the track “Slapping,” calling out for more.
“We were so overwhelmed by the audience and their energy and how they felt the music,” said Nora.
“I could see in their faces that they were connecting with it and that just meant the world to me. This doesn’t stop here and it’s just fueling our fire for the future.”