Ghalia Benali (Arabic: غالية بنعلي, romanized: Ghāliya Binʿalī; born 21 December 1968) is a Tunisian singer, songwriter, writer, and graphic designer.
Benali's southern Tunisian upbringing and fascination with Middle Eastern and Arab legendary artists is palpable in her music style.
Some of the most prominent projects Benali has worked on are Kafichanta, Wild Harissa, Romeo and Leila, Al Palna, and The Indian Hadra.
At the age of four, Benali's father ended his medical studies and decided to return to the family's homeland, where she grew up in Zarzis, a coastal town in southeastern Tunisia.
As a young girl, she started exploring her melodic fascination with recitations of the Quran, Indian, and Egyptian cinema, in addition to Middle Eastern and Arab musicians such as Oum Kalthoum, Sabah Fakhri, and Adib AlDayikh.
With the support of her mother, Benali used to play dress-up at family gatherings and perform for her guests, yet due to her shy nature, singing for a crowd was rather challenging.
Hoping to present the music of Arab cabaret to Europeans and remain in touch with her origins, Benali performed with the trio "Kafichantas" with lute player Moufadhel Adhoum, and percussionist Azeddine Jazouli.
Originally written in French and translated to English and Arabic, "Romeo and Leila" shows us that love is rebirth, never death, as tradition and literature tend to carve in our subconscious.
The personal project was not recorded with a music label, but with the help of the Palestinian founder of the Amal Festival in Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Ghaleb Jaber, and the Flemish community of Belgium.
After a long jamming session, the song "Bharat" came to life, which evolved over the years to set the tone of the "Al Palna" album.
The intimate audience of avid music and poetry-recitation lovers continuously appeared entranced with the uniting classical Arabic and Indian tunes.
Years later, Benali remained as passionate as ever about her fictional and honorary grandmother, deciding to embrace the love the Arab world has for her music icon and pay tribute as a loyal granddaughter.
The Voice talent show on the MBC channel was premiering the same year and the management team contacted Benali to participate in their first season.
The music involved solo-voiced madrigals accompanied by instruments, vocal duets, and trios, a women's choir and polyphonic settings by composers such as Hildegard of Bingen, De Machaut, Dunstable, Agricola, Lassus, Grandi, Sances, Monteverdi, Schütz, Buxtehude, and J. Ch.
The international cast took their project to Mechelen, Berlin, Hamburg, Nürnberg, Winterthur, Sevilla, and Vilnius, and an album was released in 2016 by Warner Classics.
To her, freedom was never about overthrowing political figures, so instead, Benali immediately started recording the powerful poem tackling the individual's path towards liberty.
Benali graced the stage in the MwSOUL performance, creating a pulse that is organically provided by oud, flute, trumpet, sax, sousaphone, & drums, along with her dark and commanding voice and horns that add punchy rhythmic riffs.
From moments of calm voice tagged solely with oud or sousaphone to full-throated vocal notes, the performance is a roller coaster of beats and emotions.
After years of struggling with unorganized management, Benali finally decided to take things into her own hands and founded an outlet to exhibit her art, music, and literature.
Immediately after finishing the MwSOUL project, Benali created a manuscript called "One Hour Before the Gods Awake" that includes 59 short fictional tales accompanied by 59 artworks.
Fascinated as a child by "The Little Prince" novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the renowned literature quote "Draw me a sheep," has constantly consumed Benali's thoughts.
The concept of "Draw Me a Doll" project is that what a person chooses to wear might suggest his/her character, yet it will never embody the soul and authentic nature.
The project tackles themes such as freedom, inspiration, beauty, skin color, diversity, acceptance while highlighting Benali's opposition to prejudice, racism, and body shaming.
[citation needed] Feeling chased out of her safe haven, Benali refused to accept the reality of selling her house which embodied her dreams and memories.
The dioramas, as the musician named them, incorporate a painted background that employ a false perspective and carefully modifying the scale of objects.
During an extremely rough patch in the musician's life, feelings such as anger, jealousy, hatred, and sadness emerged, along with many unanswered questions.
Other influential sources on Benali's mystical and spiritual art are Inayat Khan and Sri Aurobindo, one of the greatest thinkers in India, and the cultures of flamenco and gypsies of Rajasthan.