An explosion of exuberance, passion and style is the unmistakable hallmark of Lina Kawar. Her appearance in any concert location produces an immediate buzz of excitement, whether or not the audience has had the pleasure of seeing her perform. “Once every so often you hear a voice that stands out, a voice that can really reach your heart and mind,” said Sarah Fenwick, music writer for the Cyprus Weekly, published in Lina’s adopted country of Cyprus. “Lina Kawar has such a voice, richly vibrant, powerful and sincere.”
“I was not shy when I was young, that came a little bit later,”
said Lina. |
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“I’d be out with my parents at restaurants, and get up to sing. I was maybe 8 or 9 years old.”
When she moved for a while to Florence in South Carolina, Lina sang at her
graduation, and her mother,
who knew how much she loved to sing, would push her at every opportunity.
Lina recalls that when she was 15, she got up in a harbourside bar and was
just told, “Sing a song.” She
pitched into the Whitney Houston number, “I will always love you,”
without any music. “I just closed my eyes
and started to sing,” said Lina.
This sort of setting, without music, is a challenge for any singer, but as
she sang, the noise in the bar dropped,
until, apart from her voice, you could have heard a pin drop.
“I was so nervous at first, but then I realized there was no need to
be. The audience was interested and the
experience for me was unforgettable,” she said.
Later Lina would get up to sing as often as she could in a karaoke bar run
by her brother, and later formed
her own band, called “Split Ends” because it was made up of people
from a variety of nationalities, Filipino,
Armenian, her brother and herself, Lebanese.
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“I remember a favourite song of mine then was ‘The Rose’
by Bett Midler, but I developed a much bigger repertoire, although I
stayed with a mixture of ballads, rhythm and blues, and rock,”
said Lina. “It might be rock or blues, but for me it must have
soul.” |
After she won a Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation contest, Afetiries, with a
heart-stopping rendition of “How do I
live without you,” by Trish Yearwood, Lina became a natural choice to
appear in the backing group for the
island’s entries in three successive Eurovision Song Contests.
Lina went to London where she met Jazzie B, the producer of SoulIISoul, who
praised her talent and urged
her to focus on her unique musical abilities.
Her stirring presence at any event led to her being called on to sing at company
anniversaries, including a
Nicosia Hilton party for a division of Cyprus Airways, a string of UN events,
and she also performed at a
wedding attended by the President of Cyprus.
She became well known in Nicosia clubs for her powerful voice and dynamic style,
and has been much
praised for her appearances over a long period at the Blue Bar, set within the
old Venetian walls of the city.
A particular accolade came along for Lina when a producer from Canada heard
her sing, and later took
three tracks on her demo disc to use in a television movie starring Bo Derek.
Her style and presentation has drawn its inspiration from a series of her childhood
favourites, Mariah Carey,
Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, and Lina says,
“I sing just about everything, but I love
rock, and I love soul,
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