Mayssa Karaa

About Mayssa Karaa

“Tell me which land shall I call home?
The one beneath my feet or the one across the ocean?”

With her captivating multi-octave voice and persuasive cross-cultural message, vocalist and songwriter Mayssa Karaa defines a new era of musical inclusion. Her songs tell of a journey connecting her origins in the ancient land of Lebanon to her adopted home of Los Angeles, California.

For her full-length solo debut, Stranger, Mayssa sings in English in order to reach the widest possible audience. She reveals the inspiration for the song “Call Me a Stranger,” that provides the project’s title. “I went into the studio angry,” she remembers. “I have been in the (expired link). for 11 years, almost half of my life, but sometimes I feel like I am in between two places, like I have lost a part of my identity. Every time I meet someone who doesn’t know about my part of the world I am compelled to tell them about the richness of my culture and traditions. After sharing these emotions with producer Richard Jacques, he suggested that she turns these truths into lyrics. “Richard turned my anger into creativity,” Mayssa says. An additional songwriter, Kyler England worked with the pair to create the eloquent lyrics.

Cinema audiences might identify Mayssa’s voice from the hit film American Hustle, where her Arabic version of the Sixties classic “White Rabbit” was a standout track on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack album. Television audiences might recognize her from the popular PBS Special Enrico Caruso: His Life, His Cities, His Music featuring Placido Domingo in Naples. (She is also featured in the follow-up in the Spring of 2018.) International families might identify her with “The Arabic Alphabet Song” from Sesame Street that generated over 15 million YouTube views.
Melding Arabic influences into Western music is Mayssa’s forte: notable recordings in her catalog include a version of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” accompanied by the band’s Scott Page to which both Roger Waters and David Gilmour granted their blessings. Mayssa traveled to Detroit, Michigan to honor Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Legend Bob Seger. Fronting a band organized by the distinguished producer Don Was, she performed a haunting version of Seger’s “Turn the Page” in both English and Arabic.

Growing up in Lebanon, Mayssa was trained in classical music. Although she loved singing, a future in civil engineering was her plan. It was an intervention from her family that guided her to a professional music career, and the sage advice of a French conductor. “He told me, ‘When you meet God he’s going to tell you, ‘I gave you a gift – what did you do with it?’ That was the turning point in my career.
Fortunately, my dad had already applied to Berklee College of Music in Boston for me and had an audition set up.”

With the (expired link). as her home base, Mayssa, who sings in nine languages, has traveled the world performing music in a fusion of east and west, with key performances in palatial settings in the United Arab Emirates, in Belgrade, Serbia, at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam,at the UNESCO of Paris and stateside for featured concerts at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.
For Stranger, Mayssa says that her lyrics have their origins in conversations. “I would speak with my producer Richard Jacques, tell him something that I remembered, and we would come up with the lines and hooks to relate these stories.” The songs range from piano based simplicity to epic electronic orchestration. Among the highlights, “Simple Cure” speaks to finding peace through the miraculous power of inner strength, even in the chaos of a modern world. As Mayssa sings, “Step in the air, breathe in the stars, the simple cure is every heart.”

With music as her passport, Mayssa says that it was never an intention to come to the (expired link). and live inside of a bubble. “I came here to expand, to tell others about my culture and learn about theirs. What surprised me was how nice people are here, and how free I felt. I was born and raised in Lebanon, but I am very much an American too. I’m like you.”