Elsusi releases ‘Live with Dignity: Who Am I?’, completing a 20-track musical project

The Palestinian artist’s new album places expressive singing and personal storytelling at its heart, spanning Arabic rap, melody, and electronic production.

On his new release, Elsusi gives greater space to signing, melody, and emotional expression, moving between tenderness, grief, defiance, and joy, carried by electronic rhythms and contemporary production. The album explores themes such as love, fatherhood, vulnerability, identity, displacement, and belonging.

With the thread of living with dignity running through the project, the songs express the importance of fulfilling the human potential, whether this is to love, to create, to remember, or to be able to build a future for oneself. The question of ‘Who Am I?’ connects the strife of living with dignity to one’s ever-changing self of self, through loss and through new beginnings.

Surviving the genocide in Gaza, Elsusi arrived in Norway in May 2024 as the ICORN resident in Stavanger. Since then, he has written and produced 30 songs and created five music videos, taking on much of the songwriting, recording, production, filmmaking, and editing himself. Elsusi has also been actively involved in the Norwegian, Nordic, and European music scenes. His live performances include Oslo World, Oslo Mela Festival, a concert collaboration with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, the Nobel Peace Centre, Aurora Music Forum in Finland, as well as concerts in Slovakia and Switzerland.

‘Live with Dignity: Who Am I?’ was created with support from ‘Fond for lyd og bilde’ and Elsusi’s ongoing artistic work is funded by Statens kunstnarstipend.  

Listen to the album here and find out more about Elsusi on his website.