We're back again celebrating Canadian artistry with CAN You Hear Me, a series championing the music, unique talent, and diverse cultures found in the Great White North-from the jazz bars in Qu bec to the dance clubs in Ontario, all the way to the powwows in the west.
Our latest featured artist is Nemah Hasan, known better by her fans as Nemahsis. The 29-year-old Palestinian Canadian pop musician garners global attention with every move she makes, with her previous work as a fashion and beauty influencer and her hauntingly beautiful and relatable music.
Hailing from Milton, Ontario, Nemahsis first found her following online with her single what if i took it off for you?, a biting song that sparked a conversation within the Muslim community and encouraged women to talk about their personal relationships with the hijab. Her 2022 debut EP, eleven achers, named after the farm she grew up on back in Milton, is filled with minimalist yet lush folk-futurist ballads addressing topics such as immigration and depression.
Moving ahead with singles such as this year's i wanna be your right hand, Nemahsis is showing signs of shifting in a whole new direction with her music.
For the Record sat down with Nemahsis to talk about finding her sound, her new direction, and who her favorite Canadian artists are.
Tell me about your journey into making music. I started making music in late 2017, and at that time I was working a lot, sometimes even taking on three jobs at a time while also freelancing. At the time, being a music artist wasn't even an option for me. I come from an immigrant family, so there was always this pressure to have a real job. But once I got into my mid-20s I felt that I had proved to my family that I could keep a job, make a sustainable income, and can always come back to that if music didn't work out.
So I wrote my first song, what if I took it off for you?, and quit my job two weeks later. But honestly, I didn't actually like the song. I kept listening to albums like Sam Smith's The Lonely Hour and Adele's 25 and felt like their songs were all hits and sounded nothing like mine.
So music was put on the backburner while I continued to freelance, and I didn't take it seriously until the pandemic hit, where I wrote my EP, eleven achers.
How would you describe your sound? How has it evolved since you first started writing and performing? When I discovered that first level of Nemahsis, the sound was very stripped back, minimalist, and almost feminine and dainty, but with lyrics that touched on a lot of heavy topics. Whereas my new sound feels like kind of a reversal, where the lyrics are more poetic and more relatable, but the production and tone of voice play around in discomfort.
But regardless, I feel like there's room for me in the pop world so long as I'm making a difference in history, and I'd love to see if I get as much recognition and appreciation by being relatable and trying to fit into the same world as Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. I'm an artist of analytics and data, and I'd just love to see if I'm appreciated as an artist if I'm not writing music that could be tokenized by the wrong demographic. It's exciting, but also a challenge.
What has reception for your music been like in Canada from the Palestinian and wider Muslim communities? How about from white communities? Honestly, it's very weird. I feel like the Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities have known about me for quite a few years and that I was seen and recognized as an artist before the rest of Canada and the world had acknowledged me as one. But I feel like my music and career have sustained because of all the new people that have joined throughout Canada that don't look like me.
What message do you hope listeners will take away from your music? That there's no point in trying to be the best in every single situation. You don't have to be the prettiest, coolest, or the funniest one in the room all the time. For so much of my life I felt like I had to dance, doing the most to stand out so I could be accepted. Whereas now I just think there's so much room for not having to be like that.
How has Spotify for Artist tools helped you? I actually navigated my last tour with Spotify Artist tools. My manager and I would just go through the analytics and make decisions on what to hold off on and what to do. It's funny, when it comes to my songwriting, I'm very free-spirited with no real strategy, but when it comes to using Artist tools, I become very analytical and strategic.
Who are some fellow Canadian artists that have inspired you? How about other Arab or Palestinian artists living in the diaspora? Oh my gosh, there are so many. I love Nelly Furtado. I think she's so good that I even forget that she's Canadian, and the impact she's had on us all has been enormous. I also love Joni Mitchell.
And of course, C line Dion! I always say that she's like the Coca-Cola of music in that no matter where you go, Ethiopia, Jordan, Palestine, or China, everybody knows My Heart Will Go On. They know what movie it comes from, who sang it, and they'll even belt it out word for word. There's a lot of power in being an artist like that.
Outside of Canada, Yuna is a big one that I'd like to mention. When I was in grade 10 back in 2011, she had just released Decorate, and I emailed her to tell her that I thought what she was doing was great, and the fact that there was a woman singing in a hijab in pop music blew my mind. She later emailed me back with a lot of encouraging words, and honestly, I wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for that email.
Start listening to the sound of Nemahsis with her eleven achers EP.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
We're back again celebrating Canadian artistry with CAN You Hear Me, a series championing the music, unique talent, and diverse cultures found in the Great White North-from the jazz bars in Qu bec to the dance clubs in Ontario, all the way to the powwows in the west.
