Ilo Toerkell: On your last record, MISTRAL, you worked and producer Spoke, and for the first time, shared some softer, more personal songs like “Life to the Pen” and “Stuck in my feelings”. How did you get to that point? 

Sorah: When I started making music, I was very angry. I was mad at the world and frustrated, and had a lot of stuff to say. For a while, I was so focused on larger societal structures that I didn’t realise that what I was rapping about was intertwined with my personal experiences. The environment I was brought up in, my class situation, my background, everything is connected. I’m not just a political figure who analyses society through rap; I also need to analyse my own emotions and experiences. Realising that the personal is always connected to the political gave me room to do that.

I want to heal as much as I can, and I want to change society because I don’t believe anyone can truly heal while the world is burning.

Burning Down the Entire Thing

You said that you came to music from a place of anger, with politics and injustice being the main motivators. What shaped your political and societal consciousness?  

I’ve always been politicised through my dad. My dad is Algerian and fled Algeria when he was 20 because of the political situation. So, he has a very, let’s say, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist vision of the world. From a very young age, he would explain politics and world news to me, like the Arab Spring, what’s happening in Iraq and Syria, US involvement, and so on. Those were the first moments of my politicisation.

When I was 15, my mom left back to England, and I stayed in France with my dad and my brother. We lived in the outskirts of Paris. That was the first time I saw mass poverty, police brutality, discrimination, the critical situation of refugees, and I was getting more and more revolted and started organising riots at my school, joining the movements on the streets. During that time in school, I got even more politicised and quickly took on a quite radical view. Like we can’t reform a system that’s built on oppression. We’ve got to burn the entire thing down.

How did you then find rap as a release for that?

That came way later. I arrived in Berlin when I was 19 and worked in a kindergarten with other jobs on the side. Then COVID came and I was at home, broke as fuck, consuming too much alcohol and cigarettes. I got to the point where I couldn’t keep going on like that. I had so much to say and needed an outlet for that. My friends encouraged me to try rapping. When I started writing lines, it was my flatmate Intare who produced and featured on them. Within a few weeks, our first songs were done, and we released Frontlines.

Did rap also influence how you view politics and society?

Maybe in the way that once you start being politicised and making political music, you have a responsibility to question and stay aware of what’s going on. When you perform at demos and rap about politics and oppression, you have to listen to what people are going through. Living in Germany, for example, it’s crucial to learn about the role of the German state in suffering around the world, in order to make music that has a real impact.

Fighting Back

Since the genocide in Gaza started in October 2023, you have performed at many pro-Palestinian demonstrations and fundraisers. What is it like for you to perform at demos? 

Performing at demos is very empowering and very overwhelming. At demonstrations, there are so many emotions involved. People are angry, revolted, sad, grieving. Coming out and doing music, which is a form of entertainment, sometimes feels like it isn’t my place or the right place for it. But listening to music and art that reflect your experience is important, especially in those moments.

Why is it so important?

Demonstrations like the pro-Palestinian demos or the Hanau demos are about grieving and remembering the dead, but they are also about coming together to remind each other that we are here to fight. They died, but we are alive, so we have to keep fighting for them and for the living. It can be challenging, but when we come together, sing the same lines, or shout the same chant, there’s this feeling that we are not alone in this fight. Music can remind us of that.

No matter how many stages I am given, my music belongs to the streets. It is to give strength to the people, to encourage us to keep fighting.

The pro-Palestinian demos in Berlin have been notoriously policed, cancelled, censored, and demonstrators subjected to police brutality. Are you ever afraid when you go on stage at protests?

I’m actually more afraid when I am performing in a club. Of course, on stage at a demo, I am very visible to the cops, and I know they are watching when I’m giving them the middle finger. But I won’t let them scare me into not saying what I believe in and what needs to be said. I have been attacked by the police while I was on stage, and then people fight back. We fight back. At demos, I am surrounded by so many people around me, who are there for the same reason that I don’t feel alone. We resist together.

When touring your new album, you faced repression, and a venue in Hamburg even cancelled your show. How do you deal with that?

Hamburg wasn’t the first time this happened. Since I have taken a position on Palestine, a lot of people have cancelled on me, tried to censor me, or police me and what I say. They call people in solidarity with Palestine antisemitic and violent, but they don’t realise that we come from a place of love for the people and for freedom, and not hate. Organisers shouldn’t get away with secretly policing people while projecting a different image to the outside. As a political artist, it is also my job to bring these things to light. I don’t want to bring places down, but I want them to change and to be accountable.

“Solidarity is not a choice, it is a necessity
I raise my voice, I make noise, watching you resenting me
My ancestors were murdered for their existence, I am the breathing proof of their resistance”
– “Slam” Sorah

Calm After the Storm

Your album MISTRAL is named after the winds in southern France. Why?

I’ve spent a lot of time at the sea in the south of France, a place connected to family memories, but also struggles. A lot of my lyrics are about the dark sides of the world we live in, how fucked up it is. Still, I have so much hope inside of me that I also want to spread. The Mistral winds are a metaphor for that. The wind can last from a few hours up to a week, but in the end, the skies are blue. There is always a calm after the storm. That is also what this record is. There are these very intense and angry moments, but also softer, hopeful songs.

At the end of the song I say : ‘Mistral, tu m’auras pas, après le noir, la lumière vaincra’. I am telling the wind that it won’t get me because after the darkness, my light will prevail.

The song “Stuck in My Feelings” captures the challenge of balancing being politically active while still taking care of oneself. What does the song mean to you?

That song is my baby. I get emotional even just listening to it. It is about that feeling of being stuck sometimes in the face of everything that is going on, and trying to take care of others, but also myself. So many people are getting burned out just doing what they have to do to survive in this world. The song is my manifesto, stating that I do not want to lose my mind. It is about being conscious of what is going on in the world while remaining conscious of what is going on inside of me, as well, so as not to lose yourself in this madness.

Photos by Ilo Toerkell

MISTRAL by Sorah and Spoke is out now. Stay up to date with Sorah via her Instagram and website. You can catch Sorah live in Berlin on April 18th at bUM Berlin, performing at the fundraiser for 3ezwa, an organisation that provides legal and financial assistance to those targeted by state repression for their Palestine solidarity.