Najla Shami

Versatile songwriter and singer with a huge scope in music, art, and teaching, she is currently based in Santiago de Compostela, the northern Spanish city. Coming from different cultural backgrounds—from a Palestinian father and a Galician mother—this mixture is the key that defines her musical career. With a voice full of character, she combines jazz, funk, blues, Brazilian, Galician, and Spanish music, and is starting to add her Arabic roots as well. She became interested in music since her childhood and began studying and singing when she was 9. She also took part in different polyphonic choirs and Galician folk bands. It was then when she composed her first songs. However, it was when she was 17 and learned to play the guitar that her songs turned into a more personal style and her voice was influenced by different styles such as jazz, funk, blues, and world music. She went on to study modern music and musical education so she could become proficient in vocal technique and its pedagogy. In order to do so, she traveled to different countries such as Norway, India, Japan, Portugal, Jordan, and Spain as a solo artist or as a part of different musical groups. Her work also stands out when she accompanies several polyphonic world music choirs such as Coro da Rá, Coro de Agemm, and the vocal jazz quintet Os Tristáns from Galicia.

Between 2003 and 2011, she collaborated in different works as she gradually incorporated new influences into her musical language such as Portuguese, Brazilian, and African, mixing those, which have a great impact on her music, with her roots and jazz. It is at this point in her career when she takes part in several tours that are meeting points for musicians from all over the world (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Galicia, and Spain) and in the recording of the record-book and documentary CoraSons (Kalandraka, 2013). She also took part in festivals such as "Estou Lá, Festival da Lusofonia" or "Terra da Fraternidade, Homenaxe a Zeca Afonso" and TV shows such as Oh Happy Day! in 2015 as a judge on the Galician version.

Her first work as a solo artist, the record-book "Na lingua que eu falo" (Galaxia, 2013), is an in-depth look at the poems of the Galician poetess Rosalía de Castro. In this work, the Galician-Palestinian songwriter Najla Shami tries to bring together her origin and her modern influences. She was selected as a finalist in the XIII Premios Opinión de Música Folk in the categories of Best New Artist and Best Original Theme.