With wide-eyed awe and innocent wonder, a five-year-old Dana Alfardan had for the first time, felt a tug and a pull inside of her to write a classical album. “It was my dream ever since,” she says, sitting in the plush environs of a five-star hotel.
It took a child to bring out the childhood dream in Alfardan, in all its beautiful melodic glory. Reminiscing about the time she was pregnant and took the plunge into music, she says, “There was life coming out of me and I wanted to give her something. And that’s why the first piece I wrote was Layla (her daughter’s name).”
Leaving her job in the family jewellery business to chisel out a career in music during pregnancy, Dana has covered a stupendous amount of ground in a short time. The multi-talented artiste, who made history by producing her well-received 2013 album Paint — it’s the first English-language album by a Qatari — is a self-taught musician with a penchant for reinventing the wheel.
Community settles down for a conversation with Dana that traverses everything from finding her musical voice to founding DNA Records, Qatar’s first record label.
 
What kind of music did you grow up listening to?
My first real relationship with music was classical music. Obviously, at the age of 11, I was one of those teenyboppers picking up teen magazines and following the trend of that time, like listening to those one-hit-wonder bands and artistes. But what I did very quickly was get into rock music. That brought to me a much stronger musical element. So I would listen to bands like Aerosmith and Guns N’ Roses. Although I loved classical music, too, I was very removed from it. It’s with albums such as Metallica’s S&M, which brought the orchestral grandeur into metal music, that I realised there is a bridge, a relationship between contemporary music and classical music that can be explored with this larger arrangement. And that’s the path I began to follow.
 
You were pregnant when you started following this path of exploring music as a creative pursuit and a career. What were the first thoughts like?
When I got pregnant, I thought I would give myself a break for nine months and figure out what I really needed to do. I thought to myself — I am about to bring life into this world. What world am I bringing her out into? Who am I? One day, I was listening to music and I thought I want to make this. So I thought I should write a story and through that start exploring different themes, ideologies and concepts. So I wrote a musical set in the American Civil War. But towards the end of writing it, I realised it is actually a pop album — this would be Paint. That didn’t devalue it. It was still good music! I then met a wonderful producer who specialises in film music. I loved the huge sound and the filmic scope he could create. Even today, I love listening to Paint.
 
Singing must have been very challenging given that someone else was supposed to sing the album?
Yes. I was nine months pregnant and we were all set to record the album in a London studio. But the singer couldn’t make it and someone had to step in. Since I was singing those songs when I was writing them, I thought I could sing them. But I got into the studio and realised I couldn’t sing one song fully. So I took vocal lessons for five weeks, learning everything from tone and pitch to breathing right, which was another challenge in itself as I had this huge thing that was pushing from within. Sometimes, it would take me two days to record a song. It was wonderful for me to actually have that challenge and overcome it. Even today it’s something I always turn back to when I tell myself that I can’t do something: ‘Well, I learned to sing, didn’t I?’
 
Why do you think the moment of clarity rushed to you at that particular point in your life?
It was my child. When you are pregnant, the thought of bringing your child into the world is the most profound and overwhelming experience you can ever have; whether you are ready or not, whether you have planned or not, you start to question everything. You have to be in a great place internally. The biggest question you ask yourself is — what do I want for my child? What do I want her to know of me? You become your harshest critic. Looking back, I could have only been that person. I can’t imagine myself being somebody else. I couldn’t imagine myself giving birth to my child before I launched my music career because music is part of my blood. I had been denying it for such a long time and shoving it aside. Had I not done that, my daughter would have just gotten half of me. She wouldn’t have gotten the passion, the excitement and the enthusiasm. The way she and I now communicate is such a bonding aspect of our relationship.
 
How did DNA Records happen?
I realised I don’t want to sing because I wanted to write. I figured I can’t sing better than other people. While I think I managed to sing quite well on Paint, I don’t think I could be one of the best singers. But I do think I could be one of the best writers. If I am to go global, I need to feel and understand that I can be cultivating the best of the best. I feel like I can achieve that with composing. And I thought since I am doing that, why don’t I develop this structure to absorb all these different things I am doing? That’s when I decided to set up a label and DNA Records came through.
Is the business part as CEO of DNA Records as passionate a project as the creative part of composing music?
Yes, because a lot of it goes hand in hand. The developer of the product is also the person marketing the product because only you can understand what your music really is. Having been an artiste in the past, I understand the pros and cons of large labels. As an artiste, if I were to ever sign with a label, I wanted to have a specific deal, a specific philosophy, an artiste-centered environment that would stimulate me. So, this was essentially an experiment. We watched our first artiste Ryan O’Reilly grow as an artiste, under DNA Records. That’s the biggest testament to the success of this model. We launched his album recently, and from Germany to the UK, it’s climbing up the charts.
 
How many artistes has DNA Records signed up until now?
Our tiny label and team is putting everything on a huge international platform. We are focussing on individual artistes such as Ryan, and DJ Juan Pestana, who recently put out a superb show at Rooftop at The St. Regis Doha. With Pestana, it’s a collaboration. My songs that were supposed to go in my second album found an even better outlet. I released them under DJ Pestana featuring many different vocalists and it’s called These are the Best Times.
 
What made you turn your attention towards more of electronica?
Of late, I have seen that the electronic world brings together a diverse range of music under its wing; like Robin Schulz’s remix of Prayer in C, which talks about the plight of the world and the bad things that are happening. This is unusual for dance music which is usually a bubblegum impersonation of an invented state of perpetual Disneyland. So I thought wow, you can actually address real issues and deliver that to the masses through this music. DJ Pestana came in as a sound engineer. When I asked him to help me out with some instrumental bits for my composition template, I saw that the man could do anything, from playing jazz bits with the flair of a jazz pianist to recreating classical sounds. I figured this guy could actually be a DJ as he can produce tracks. And I love the idea of the DJ being a musician. So Pestana is playing it all instead of pushing loops, which is a perfect fit for our philosophy at DNA, which is that we create everything from within.
 
What is the future, big-picture plan of DNA Records?
We are looking to set up a music festival here in Qatar. It will showcase all the original DNA Records content and will feature local and regional talents. We would want to align ourselves with the local art scene as well. We already have the talent, the facilities, and even access to top quality musicians in QPO. We want to bring everything together so we can have an industry here in Qatar.

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