Yasmine Hamdan

My father is an engineer, and my mother raised the three children.

When the public doesn't understand me, it's a battle. So when I choose words, I choose them for their musicality, rhythm, and sense, and I choose the right dialect to express that.

Because of the Lebanese civil war, I had a scattered childhood. I had to build my own connections to each country we moved to.

It's normal; Arab women have always been very active at the forefront of culture - as film producers since the 1920s; as singers, dancers, choreographers, writers for much longer than that.

Imagine a singer with the virtuosity of Joan Sutherland or Ella Fitzgerald, the public persona of Eleanor Roosevelt, and the audience of Elvis, and you have Umm Kulthum.

All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character.

Maybe I was blessed that my main drive was purely selfish. I needed to make something, make my life better, wider, have poetry in my life, have something that gives me hope on an everyday basis. That was my main drive all along, really.

With Soapkills, we were lucky. We started at a time of transition where things were not ready, nothing was available.

I always had this crisis: where do I come from? I was never an insider, never an outsider; I was always in the middle. But it means I never have borders in my head.

When I started, I didn't know how to sing in Arabic - it's a very complex and sophisticated music full of codes and modes and quarter-tones.

I'm Muslim but not really. My family did not care. And I always managed to skip religion classes when I was living in the Gulf, even when they were obligatory.

I sing 'Beirut' for what the city is for me, but I am also singing as an exile.

It's complicated for my music to be accepted, even in Lebanon and the Arabic world - I sing in Arabic, but there's no lute, no classical instruments. Maybe with the Internet opening things up, things will change.

I sing in Arabic as a statement. It's art, and it's a challenge.

I'm inspired by many artists whose language I don't understand.

I was raised by strong women, and the role models I had in music and cinema were strong, too - liberated and provocative.

I was born in the middle of Lebanon's civil war.

My dad was a brilliant civil engineer. My parents later divorced, but we lived in Abu Dhabi, Greece, Kuwait.