Mayssa Jallad

Mayssa Jallad is a Beirut-based bilingual singer-songwriter, architectural researcher and teacher. Her work deals with the highly personal as well as the political, as with her upcoming first solo album “Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels”, which explores the histories of urban battles that occurred before she was born, during the Lebanese Civil War, through a collaborative musical and architectural lens. In 2013, Mayssa founded indie-pop band Safar with guitarist Elie Abdelnour, releasing debut album In Transit with Lebanese indie label Ruptured in 2017, and follow-up EP Studies of an Unknown Lover in 2019. Both albums were produced by Lebanese producer Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios in Beirut. Safar has performed in various venues in Lebanon, as well as in Paris, Belgium, London, Dubai, New York, Durham and Boston. The band possesses a strong and widespread following in Lebanon, gathered over the years thanks to a number of intimate performances, marked by singer Jallad’s emotional vocal delivery and Elie Abdelnour’s superior guitar work. Mayssa also performed with Lebanese producer Zeid Hamdan as part of the band "Zeid and the Wings", in Cairo and Gouna in 2015 and Casablanca in 2014. Mayssa’s most recent multi-genre collaborations include “Madina min Baeed” (2022) with electronic musician/producer Khaled Allaf; “Bi Kheir” and “Fil Aatma” (2022) with indie supergroup Baada Ab (Dani Shukri, Ezra Tenenbaum and Omaya Malaeb), released by Thawra records and Found Sound Nation.