For Palestinian-Canadian singer-songwriter Merna, her earliest connection to music is a distant memory from when she was barely 3 years old, and she vividly recalls stepping onto a stage. While attending an Arabic concert in Jordan with her mother, the young artist wandered down the center aisle toward the performance platform, and the featured vocalist handed her a live microphone. Although the exact melodies she sang may have been fleeting, the experience planted a permanent seed within her soul.
As she grew into her musical era, she began tracking lead vocals over karaoke cassette tapes, kickstarting a journey of musicality. "I've always, always, always, always been a fan of music and always loved to sing," Merna recalled in an interview with Newsweek, reflecting on those formative days when she belted out tracks from some of the strongest voices in R&B, including Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, and the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, sounds which have become key in her 90s R&B-tinged soundscapes. While many contemporary recording projects require months of agonizing studio refinement, Merna initially crafted her latest suite of songs during an intense, extemporaneous five-hour session, and the entire process unfolded spontaneously when she walked past her hallway piano.
According to the acclaimed artist, she initially felt stuck at the keys, but a sudden spark ignited when she heard the acoustic tones of the Arabic oud, and the entire project poured out of her from track one to track five in a single sitting. "It was like a five-hour session with myself where I was like, 'I know that this is one long song, really, and I have to just keep going until I feel like I'm done,'" the "Magic" singer explains. After listening through the musical outpouring, she distilled the project to its most gripping moments, enlisting Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest on bass and Larnell Lewis of Snarky Puppy on drums.
Though the initial raw session produced extensive material—including a longer freestyle prayer on the track "Reach for Heaven"—she scaled back her spoken-word vocals, since the instrumental arrangement already communicated her core message with absolute clarity. Eventually titled For Seasons: Love in a Time of War, the 15-minute project extends her previous release, Ours to Keep, and serves as both a personal prayer and an invitation to collective energy. "This is for seasons, and it is for all times," Merna says, recounting the moment the title crystallized during a drive with her partner.
"We're living in a time of war, and I don't know that we've never not lived in a time of war." Though the times may be tumultuous, Merna is acutely aware of the need to keep a hopeful energy and how fleeting positivity can be. "Gratitude is the core of my life because we always have everything and we always have enough and exactly what we need at any time," she shares, reflecting on her reaction to the final masters. "I'm also grateful for being grateful at this point.
When you know that everything that is is meant to be, and everything that isn't, you're being saved." Although navigating the modern music business presents continuous challenges for independent creators, Merna consciously detaches herself from commercial obligations, and her daily regimen prioritizes spiritual alignment over corporate metrics. "My main work every day is to work on myself, so understand myself, heal myself, understand my place in the world, my responsibility," Merna notes, explaining how she avoids feeling pressured by external expectations. "The trepidation that I'd ever felt was really more about how do I exist in this industry space when I know that the industry thing actually doesn't mean s*** in the grand sense of life and purpose." Because she views artistic expression as a sacred medium rather than a commercial product, she remains determined to exist on the periphery of the conventional market, with her goal being to maintain an uncorrupted channel between her spirit and her listeners.
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