I've been in contact with music since I was four or five years old through my father, because of the interest he had in music and all his musical skills. I finally managed to make that my profession.

My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.

I think about all these influences and musical cultures, then the opinion of the audience is of course important, but when I'm working on an album or a new project, I'm not all the time thinking about what the audience will think about it.

I prefer simple things - monotone melodies repeating the same things all the time. Because I think life is like that.

Going back and forth between Western Arabic and African countries clearly created the various musical backgrounds I could have and obviously influenced my professional attitude, my way of approaching both music composition and singing, particularly phrasing.

I used to play guitar for myself and write lyrics and listen to different styles of music.

The fact of playing an instrument and singing... that I can try to make my dream of singing and becoming a professional musician come true is linked probably to the fact that I traveled a lot, which gave me an open mind and an ability to push my limits.