Chantal Chamandy

Chantal Chamandy is of Greek and Lebanese descent, and was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She moved to Montreal, Canada when she was a young girl, and speaks French, Italian and Spanish as well as Arabic and English.

Some of Chamandy’s earliest memories are of music. As a child in Alexandria, she remembers listening to her family’s many recordings of Oum Kalsoum, the legendary Egyptian singer generally regarded as the most accomplished Arabic-language vocalist ever. The fact that Kalsoum was so beloved by Chamandy’s French-speaking family did not seem noteworthy. “A large part of both the Lebanese and Greek communities in Egypt speaks French. Middle Eastern people tend to speak a lot of languages,” Chamandy says matter-of-factly. “I was raised in the Lebanese Orthodox church, but in our neighborhood, there were Christians and Muslims and a little bit of everything. I didn’t actually become fluent in Arabic until my grandmother came to live with us in Montreal when I was 14.”

Once ensconced with her family in French-speaking Canada, Chamandy nonetheless mastered English, today her primary language. Likewise, she became a fan of Motown, Barry White, the Bee Gees and Abba, among other pop acts.

Meanwhile, her home was filled with Italian opera and the music of Charles Aznavour, Edith Piaf, and especially, Dalida, an Egyptian singer of Italian origin based in France who sang in five languages and sold more than 150 million albums around the globe during her 30-year career. Like Dalida, Chaman recorded a version of the traditional Egyptian song “Salma Ya Salama”; her lovely, evocative rendition closes Love Needs You, her latest release.

Chamandy’s own course as a singer developed in the church choir, where her mother also sang (her father favored piano). She later found herself in demand as a wedding singer, admitting: “I’d sing whenever I could. I always wanted to be onstage.” After performing a capella in a talent competition, a teacher from the Montreal Conservatory of Music encouraged her to pursue formal training, remarking, “If you work at it, you can become a great singer.” Chamandy thereafter began study with the internationally acclaimed vocal instructor Carmen Mehta.

By the time she was 15, Chamandy was writing her own material and though still in school, had essentially become a professional musician, performing throughout Canada and abroad. She made some recordings for the Canadian market for major labels, but it was not until she began to record Love Needs You that she felt she’d come into her own as a totally independent and uncontrolled artist. “With this record,” she confirms, “I wrote the music and the lyrics, I arranged the songs, I produced the songs, and the songs were recorded in my studio. I had complete control over the process. For the first time in my life, I’m doing exactly what I want creatively.”