Nadine Altounji

Nadine Altounji’s music lives somewhere between Aleppo, Lima, and Montreal, where the musical forms of maqam meet landó and where French chanson takes on Arabic hues. A singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist born in Montreal of Syrian origin, she carries the stories of memory, mixed identity, and the wounds of the world and the heart that reveal our shared humanity. She learned to play the oud, the instrument her great-grandfather played in Aleppo, as a way to reconnect with her roots. Nadine sings in Arabic, French, English, and Spanish, four languages that mirror the territories her music crosses. A trained guitarist, she spent several years accompanying Montreal artists before launching her solo career in 2016. Research trips to Ecuador and Peru gave birth to the audiovisual EP, The Stories That Tie Us to Trees, Vol. 1 (2022) and its French-language companion, Enracinées dans l’histoire, Vol. 2 (2023). Two tracks from these projects, No lo olviden and Dans la folie de nos temps, were selected by Putumayo World Music for their compilations.