Dana Salah: The Palestinian-Jordanian singer injecting her identity into her music

Less than a decade ago, Dana Salah’s life looked very different. The Palestinian-Jordanian singer-songwriter, who was living in New York, had just released her first single in English, Read My Lips, under the moniker King Deco, and had worked in Jay-Z’s studio, writing lyrics for reality TV shows like Love & Hip-Hop and Basketball Wives.

As King Deco, Dana thought she had reached the pinnacle of her success when her 2019 single, Castaway, became a radio hit overnight.

Six years after the release of Castaway, Dana Salah is now an Arabic pop star based in the Middle East. But that is not to say that the 36-year-old’s life has done a 180 – she is still doing the exact same thing, making music that she loves. The difference? The Dana Salah of the past thought she had to leave Amman to pursue her dream of becoming a successful singer, while the Dana Salah of today is embracing her Palestinian-Jordanian identity and injecting it into her music.

Dana says she lived in a state of duality, balancing what Jordanian society deemed a good Arab girl with a respectable career (she studied Economics at university), with her passion for singing, DJing and making music.

“When I first started making music in Arabic, being back in Amman helped,” Dana tells The New Arab. “My parents got to see it and their communities’ reaction to it. They saw that I am still able to be Dana bint al ‘eyla, brought up in Amman and a pop singer and that it didn’t change anything.”

Like many trajectory-changing stories, Dana credits COVID-19 with her transition from the Western music industry to the Arab music industry. Shortly after she decided to leave New York for Amman, the pandemic hit, and she was forced to stay in the United States for another year, at her grandparents’ house in Michigan. During lockdown, she was forced to reevaluate her career.

“I realised up until that point, despite the backlash and my parents being stressed about the career path I had chosen, I was really proud of everything I'd done,” she says.

“I sat with myself and asked, ‘Is this what I really want to do?’ and the answer was yes. So, I decided to change my name from King Deco back to Dana Salah," the singer continues. 

“In 2021, I found myself in Amman, and I met a producer who encouraged me to write in Arabic. I tried it, and there was something I was able to express in Arabic that I was not able to in English. I always felt something was missing from my music in English, and I didn't realise that it was my Arab identity."

But it isn’t just the Arabic language that has changed Dana Salah’s music. She brings every aspect of her Palestinian heritage to her songs, from the dialect, with unmistakably Palestinian-Jordanian phrases like “haali haali haali” or “tloolahi ya Dana” to the traditional Palestinian tatreez, thobes and headdresses she dons in her video clips.

Take Weino for example, a fusion of Arabic melodies with reggaeton and hip-hop, where Dana is asking, “Where is that guy?” (you know, the emotionally available guy whose whereabouts many single women are still enquiring about). Everything about the video clip reminds you of Palestine, from Dana and her friends in their fallahi dresses, hair tied up in cotton handkerchiefs, balancing freshly harvested oranges in wicker baskets on their heads, to the traditional wedding chant sung by older Palestinian women in the background of the song.

And while Dana wrote Weino as an anthem of female empowerment, she says she was surprised to find it has also been a hit with her male fans.

“I thought men are not going to able to relate to this record, but it's funny, more men relate to it than women do, which I love,” she smiles.

Just as the Dana Salah of the 2020’s evolved from King Deco in the 2010’s, there is a contrast between the Dana Salah who sang pre-October 7 2023 and the Dana Salah of today.

Her last two major singles, Ya Tal3een and Shu Ma Sar, are markedly different in tone to the upbeat, poppy and what Salah describes as “fluffy” music she made before the onset of the ongoing war on Gaza.

Ya Tal3een is inspired by a Palestinian Tarweedeh, a type of song that Palestinian women would sing outside the prisons incarcerating their loved ones, holding encrypted messages, such as how and when the fadayeen would come to help the prisoners escape.

Palestinian women first started singing Tarweedeh during the British Mandate in the early 20th century and carried on this coded method of passing on messages after the establishment of Israel.

“When the six prisoners dug themselves out of Gilboa prison with a spoon, I decided to make a cover of Ya Tal3een, and it was just a small clip that I put out in 2021,” Dana shares.

“Fast forward to 2023, and fans were reposting it and asking for a full version. So, I pulled out my old laptop and the vocals that I had initially recorded and used that as a starting point. I knew I wanted to use the Tarweeda Al-Shamali sung by a dance troupe of Palestinian women as a centrepiece, but sing on top of it, so it felt like I was singing with these women. And I knew I wanted an Arabic verse and an English verse. The song just flew out of me.” 

Using the Tarweedah as the chorus, the verses in Ya Tal3een are ballad-like as Dana softly sings about her longing to reunite with other Palestinians in their homeland.

It’s a quiet form of resilience when compared to the defiant tone of Shu Ma Sar, a power anthem, the video for which is filmed in London, with footage of Dana taking part in a pro-Palestine march in the capital.

With her upcoming single, Bint Blaadak, Dana says while Palestinian women were very much her muse, it isn’t so much of a resistance song as it is a love song.

But one could argue that love in the time of war is in itself resistance. Bint Blaadak speaks of the unwavering solidarity Palestinian women give to their male counterparts. Danaa says women really are the backbone of Palestinian society.

“It’s basically a girl telling a guy, if you find yourself a strong woman, you're going to be very lucky,” she explains. “One of the lyrics in the song is, ‘If your roots were ever to waver, mine will be as strong as an olive tree.’

“Female empowerment doesn't necessarily always have to be, ‘I can do everything alone,’” she continues.

“You can be a strong female and also be supportive to male counterparts, whether it's a husband, loved one, your father, or a brother. There's a strength in knowing you can support somebody and lift them. Being a strong woman and also being nurturing and feminine aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Dana Salah’s music is available to stream and download on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and all major music streaming platforms.

Yousra Samir Imran is a British Egyptian writer and author based in Yorkshire. She is the author of Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press

Follow her on X: @UNDERYOURABAYA