| Biography | Reem Kelani is a British Palestinian musician, born in Manchester, England. Initially influenced by the jazz music her father played on his record player, her interest in Palestinian music was sparked by the music at a family wedding in her maternal home in Galilee in the 1970s.
Kelani started singing at the age of four, and she recalls it as one of the most profound experiences of her life. She continued singing as an amateur and semi-professional singer until she went professional in 1990. She studied piano as a child, and this helped expose her to Western classical music, of which her father was an avid listener. Her fathers early fascination with Fred Astaires black-and-white films introduced Kelani to the music of George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, the Jazz elements of which can be heard in her own music and in her choice of a band based around a Jazz rhythm section, alongside traditional Arabic instruments. |