DAVID GREENE, HOST:
NPR Music has been searching high and low for artists who are just starting to make a name for themselves nationally. They call the project Slingshot. And Carmel Holt of member station WFUV tells us about the LA-based musician Bedouine.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE OF THESE DAYS")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) Always looking for your next climb. The things I want don't take time or money. Oh, honey, you'll get it one of these days, one of these days.
CARMEL HOLT, BYLINE: Her music sounds like sunny California, but the musician known as Bedouine was born in Aleppo, Syria, and spent her early childhood in Saudi Arabia. When she was 10, her parents won a green card lottery and brought her to the United States. The family lived in Boston, then Houston before Bedouine made her way to LA. Bedouine, whose real name is Azniv Korkejian, worked as a Hollywood sound editor. On the side, she learned guitar and started writing and recording songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NICE AND QUIET")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) After all, isn't it the time that we make...
HOLT: Bedouine may have moved around a lot of her life, but her music is firmly rooted in the country folk rock of the '60s and '70s. Joni Mitchell, Harry Nilsson - these are Bedouine's touchstones.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NICE AND QUIET")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) I don't want to run. I don't want to try to fight it. Every time I try, I find new ways to deny it. I will try my best to keep my head nice and quiet for you, you.
HOLT: There aren't a lot of references to Bedouine's early life abroad here, but there is one track. She wrote "Summer Cold" after reading news reports about the U.S. arming opposition groups in Syria and how those weapons wound up in the hands of terrorists.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMER COLD")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) I've had enough of your guns and your ammunition.
HOLT: It's a topical song, but ends on a profoundly personal note with a sound collage, evoking the street sounds of Aleppo as she remembers them outside her grandmother's house, an access point, says Bedouine, to a place I can't return to in the foreseeable future.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SUMMER COLD")
HOLT: Bedouine may have been rootless once, but through her music, seems to have found her place.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE OF THESE DAYS")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) One of these days, you know I'm going to set our hearts ablaze if it's the last thing I do.
GREENE: That was Carmel Holt from member station WFUV.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONE OF THESE DAYS")
BEDOUINE: (Singing) If it's true that I feel... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.