This tour was supposed to kick off sometime in October, but it was postponed for a few months due to the flames of the Palestine-Zionism war that continues to burn everything in its genocidal path. Apologies for bringing down the mood so early in the review, but if there’s anything we’ve learned in the past four months, it’s that context is important.
If in another parallel universe Palestinian-Chilean Elyanna was instead Chinese-Chilean or English-Chilean, she would’ve had a far easier path to breaking the heavily corporatized music industry, but whatever path she’s currently taking is making things very interesting and the inevitable end result even sweeter than the sweetest of knafehs.
I had the pleasure of attending the final show of the “The Elyanna Tour,” which along with stops in major American cities included a couple Canadian stops in Toronto & Montreal. Elyanna and her people should’ve added Mexico City to the mix because I can pretty much guarantee that would’ve sold out within hours. CDMX is literally where North America has its wildest parties.
Once the show finally kicked off, you could tell that Elyanna and her troupe of performers could’ve easily filled a venue double the size of the sold-out Observatory in Santa Ana. It was a multifaceted performance that included Elyanna’s brother Firas on keyboard for a song and world-class drummer Ava Nahas who literally stole the show for few minutes here and there as Elyanna and her dancers took a breather. The dancers themselves were at the top of their game and complimented the music and Elyanna perfectly. You could tell that these were seasoned performers doing the final show of their first tour because there wasn’t one noticeable hiccup in the complicated dance routines. It was just baffling to me how such a high-quality performance could be contained in such a small venue, with no opening act, mind you. Just shocking.
And on that note, the no-opening act was literally a head-scratcher. I get it, she’s Palestinian, but couldn’t the tour manager have found at least one more Palestinian-leaning artist out there?! Are the barriers to entry so strong? Unbelievable.
The diversity of the crowd was interesting, as well. Along with the expected packed house of Arabs rocking their kufiyas, I also saw a few sprinkled Asians, heard some Spanish here and there and the age range was fairly wide going from young kids to seniors. From the opening drum beat courtesy of Ava Nahas to the final encore “Mama Eh”, the show was an aural and visual treat par-excellence.
To close, if you missed one of these shows during the tour, rest assured, Elyanna will be around spreading Palestinian culture and love for many, many years to come. The people will support her—with cold, hard dollars–literally! To prove this, don’t look just at her sold-out tour as proof, there’s also the Paliroots x Elyanna collaboration that sold out within hours, so that goes to show you the powerful and lucratively loyal following that Elyanna is building up.
Credit: All footage below was grabbed from social media. I made the personal decision to not touch my camera during the entire show and I actually did it!
Faisaling.com 
Leave a comment