On Ensen, Emel Creates Revolutionary Hybrid Sounds

Before the revolution that broke out in Tunisia in 2010, music like Emel’s would never have been allowed on the radio. But once the mass protests and civil resistance began, eventually becoming a movement that would topple the dictatorship of longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, and spread to numerous other countries in the Arab world, one of Emel’s songs, “Kelmti Horra (My Word is Free),” became the unofficial anthem of the Tunisian Revolution.
A v