Mayssa Karaa, Simple Cure Review
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Mayssa Karaa may not have come to music in the usual way. Growing up in Lebanon, Karaa had her life path planned to pursue civil engineering. Music certainly was not an unknown quantity for Karaa, as a youth she trained in classical music, but it was a French conductor that would change her course. Karaa explains “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.” Television will 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 that was released in the Spring of 2018.) International families might identify her with “The Arabic Alphabet Song” from Sesame Street that generated over 22 million YouTube views. Her latest album Simple Cure just released on July 26th, and already is being received with a fever pitch.
Positives:
Karaa puts to good use her sweeping octave voice, with inclusive lyrics, her music speaks to a broad base of listenership, exhibiting a sense of inner peace.
Bottom Line:
Karaa connects her ancient lands of Lebanon to a captivated hometown of Los Angeles. Her music has a conversational quality about them. It stems from her innate ability to look into the soul of people and translate that into music with the help of her producer Richard Jacques. Karaa explains “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.” Each song on the album is collection of individual stories, but together it is a map of an overall biopic journey for Karaa. On Simple Cure, Karaa melds Arabic influences into Western music and the result is a stunning listen. That’s the short of it!