Nisrine’s Voice in Translation: Orchid’s frontwoman on finding her voice

Orchid’s frontwoman on finding her voice and fronting a genre-bending band

Far away in a small, small town just north of Charlotte, a Davidson College student band called Orchid has just played their final performance of the year with the founding lineup. Fronting the group is a tour de force of vocal talent named Nisrine Tiouti, a rising junior majoring in economics. 

I can confidently say as Orchid’s now-graduated bassist that Nisrine’s voice stands out as the most powerful instrument on stage at all times—emphatic, soaring, and capable of straddling the distance between My Chemical Romance, Peggy Lee, and Aerosmith. The band is on hiatus while she lives in Sweden for her fall semester abroad but I had the chance to sit down with Nisrine earlier this spring to discuss her journey with music.

What were your early musical influences? 

Well, I’ll start with my family. It was mainly my dad, my mom, and my grandma. We listened a lot to old Moroccan bands that my dad liked, one of them is called Nass El Ghiwane, who at the time sang a lot about Moroccan revolutionary political thought. My dad really liked them a lot because he also did that kind of music in college. At the time I didn’t really like his bands that much, but now I really see the value in how they use musical instruments, especially traditional ones like the guembri.

My mom and grandma on the other hand listen to more Middle Eastern music, like Umm Kulthum, who’s a legendary vocalist in the Middle Eastern/North African world. So I started listening to that, but then my brother influenced me to start listening more to Western music. One of the first people I remember listening to was actually Adele, which is, you know, a very pop sound. Even before I knew English, I was attempting to sing her songs, so that was a big influence. 

I would say what influenced me the most overall is R&B. I discovered artists like Frank Ocean, Sinéad Harnett, and Summer Walker. Also old R&B and soul music, like Etta James, lots of jazz…Amy Winehouse was a big influence for me, too. When I first started listening to her, I didn’t have the linguistic skills to understand her lyrics, but later on, I did get into it. I understood her life and what she went through, and her songs just started meaning more to me. The style that she sang in really resonated. I think Moroccan music is very soulful and finding soulful Western music felt like it was similar to what I grew up listening to. 

You speak and sing multiple languages, how do the linguistics affect your vocals? 

Two of the first languages I sang in were MSA [Modern Standard Arabic] and Moroccan, and then English. I guess I did it all at the start! My very first songs were in MSA and Moroccan in middle school, doing Middle Eastern songs. Also French because that’s what I learned in school early on, I sang Céline Dion. It’s interesting because I feel like the linguistic style or the language itself influences how you sing. 

I guess my voice does sound a little bit different because I feel like Arabic scales are just way more intricate and different in terms of how you do the runs and where you go with the note. I’m more high-pitched in Arabic, I would say. And in French, it’s kind of like a middle tone because of the way French is spoken, it’s limited. It’s not very flowy as a language. It’s kind of stiff at parts, so you can’t do a lot with the singing. So that’s like more spoken-singing in a sense, so I don’t do a lot with my runs. 

But with English, it’s very fluid. There’s a lot you can do with it. So that’s where I go crazy. I feel like my singing evolved a lot once I learned English and I was comfortable singing English songs. That’s when I figured out that I have a strong voice and I like doing runs and I can belt. My runs used to be not good at all, but once I got better in English, studied in it full time, I feel like that also improved the way I sing. And listening to more English songs, I got more artistic with it. But I lost a little bit of my Arabic singing. I really want to go back to it. I really want to practice it again, but with English singing, it was hard for me to switch back. But I still sing in all of those languages. 

I even started singing in Spanish, which was kind of a mix of all of them in a sense. We did “La Ciruela” with the band recently. In that one, it was more high pitched and did have some of the stiffness of French, but still had a little bit of fluidity. So it’s really interesting switching between languages. I really recommend artists to do that if they can because I feel like it does expand your range as a singer.

What’s your favorite genre to sing live? 

I would have to say jazz, and, I don’t even know what to call it…like, belt-y, strong, monumental songs. Big songs. Recently I’ve really enjoyed singing rock, too. I just like things with passion and power and rasp. I like meaningful lyrics, both emotionally and politically. I like powerful songs. But I also do like to sing soft, recently I sang some Laufey. Or Etta James, for example. Lots of different things. 

How has your singing evolved since joining a band? 

It has evolved immensely! I’ve noticed that some things I couldn’t hit before, I’m able to sing now. We’ve done a lot of soft and hard rock songs with a lot of rasp and build, and I think that definitely strengthened my voice and pushed me. My musical style also evolved, like on Spotify, I’m listening to bands that I’ve never listened to before. I mean, I knew Paramore, like “All I Wanted”, but now I’m much more familiar with their songs. I really love “Decode.” Also I didn’t usually sing songs that were by male-presenting people, but now I do, and it’s really interesting to see how I take on that challenge or sing them differently. So I’ve definitely been more open to singing songs from different artists that way. Like “Dream On” by Aerosmith, which was definitely…a feat. And Metallica. I never saw myself ever singing Metallica, I’m not gonna lie, but I like that I get to do it. [laughs] I’m even rapping recently on Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls On Parade,” and I’ve really enjoyed that style. Orchid has expanded my musical style and singing, and I think it just made me overall a well-rounded-artist, and an artist with something to say.