PETALING JAYA, March 23 — For a different taste in alternative electro hip-hop, look no further than Sevdaliza, one of the most interesting acts to land on Malaysian shores this year.
The Iranian-Dutch singer-songwriter's unconventional path into music is difficult to compare.
Born Sevda Alizadeh in Tehran to political refugees, she was raised in Rotterdam where sport seemed her passion for a while — she made it onto the Netherlands national basketball team at youth level.
There were hints of rebellion.
At 15, she reportedly ran away from home, spent years "just surviving” per magazine The Fader.
She can speak four languages and paid her own way for a Master’s degree in communications.
"I was always a bit stubborn. I was even a bit pretentious,” she told magazine Paper.
Music kept calling.
Sevdaliza is a self-taught singer, producer who claims to have written her first song aged seven.
"When I started making music, I found a spiritual home,” she said.
The 30-year-old cuts the profile of an artist, a term she lives up to more than most, confidently playing with themes of identity and reality — or, conversely, themes of fantasy and adopting new appearances.
"There's a woman, She's every fantasy, And no reality, In one,” she sings in Amandine Insensible, a video where Sevdaliza repeatedly switches into different guises.
There were comparisons to Icelandic icon Bjork and Portishead. One professor approached her after a "live" show to praise her vocal skills, saying it was similar to those of old Persian singers.
"But I've never had a singing lesson and I've never listened to Persian music in my life!” she claimed.
Debut album ISON dropped last year, a record four years in the making, before embarking on a world tour.
"Vulnerable” was the term frequently bandied about when describing her work, given the personal exposure and sexual nature of her work.
She credits purchasing Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope at 16 for this exploratory intuition.
"That was a big record for getting to know myself sexually.”
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