Banna first achieved popularity in the early 1990s, after recording her own versions of traditional Palestinian children's songs that were on the verge of being forgotten.

She describes her music as a means of cultural self-assertion: A part of our work consists of collecting traditional Palestinian texts without melodies.

[7][8][9] The album, dubbed "a musical antiwar message to U.S. President Bush from female singers in Palestine, Iraq, Iran, and Norway,"[5] brings these women together with others from North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Afghanistan, to sing traditional lullabies from their lands in duet form with English-language performers whose translation allows the songs to reach a Western audience.

[8] The Mirrors of My Soul, which was dedicated to all the Palestinian and Arab political detainees in the Israeli prisons, is a stylistic departure from her previous body of work.

Produced in cooperation with a Norwegian quintet, it features "Western pop styling" fused with Middle Eastern modal and vocal structures, and Arabic lyrics.