I feel like I got my first real taste of Caribbean and Cuban culture while I was there. I have quite a sizeable Cuban vinyl collection from Miami thrift stores.

If you've ever seen album covers for Arab female pop stars, it looks like the designer was paid five dollars to make them, and the extreme femaleness is astounding.

I still think you people need to be curious [in order to absorb the culture]. You need to search Uzbekistani pop music.

The first question [American college kids] asked me was, 'What state is Kuwait in?' They thought Kuwait was in America.

There's a big difference between the Arabic and Western scales. One uses quarter tone system and one doesn't. So in order for me to compose real Arabic scale melodies, I would need an Arabic keyboard, and I don't have one. So I had to compose Arabesque melodies.

The vast majority of women musicians function under singular names like 'Cher' 'Madonna'. They have to get married almost immediately to preserve their honour.

I've been exploring gender performativity in the Gulf since I was a teenager. I'm not a gender anthropologist, but I feel like there's an extreme binary between femininity and masculinity in the Gulf. From a young age, I knew I didn't want to be part of it. Gender is a huge gray area, and the problem with defined roles is that they cover up undefined ones.