MUSIC SIN FRONTERAS – Amanda Abizaid

Amanda Abizaid – The essence of Sin Fronteras

Last week, my friend Amanda Abizaid released Club Remix: Dangerous and Young, on Spotify
and I wanted to talk about it, and about her. Amanda is an unusual – and unusually talented – singer, musician, composer, flutist, pianist, and good human being. Her music shows it. “Music has the power to bring us all together peacefully around the World” she says.

A singer-songwriter known for her work on various television soundtracks, she is of Lebanese
and Mexican descent and performs and records in multiple genres, including pop, rock, and
world music multiple languages. Abizaid is perhaps best recognized for her song “A Place in
Time,” which was the theme song for the TV series “The 4400.”

Following her career is like a round -the -world cruise, and exactly what Music Sin Fronteras is all about.

Amanda Jo Abizaid was born in Beirut, Lebanon to an American mother and a Lebanese father of partial Mexican descent. She traveled the Middle East and Europe with her family before the age of ten, when she moved with her mother and brother to the United States. Later, with her four elder sisters, she formed a band and developed a talent for harmonies. However, her first exposure to music was Middle Eastern music combined with the late 1970s American influences of Alice Cooper, Elton John, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and The Beatles. She later recorded her 2017 Walking in Twos album with Stephen Stills accompanying her and formed a band with Eric Dover from Alice Cooper on guitar.

She moved to upstate New York in the U.S. and then to Virginia for high school. All this time she held on to her Arabic language as well as her English (and maybe Spanish).  She studied drama and music, became a high fashion international runway model. She moved to LA, formed the band Blue with Shane Soloski and players from Styx, Alic Cooper, Foreigner and others.  She went on to record music and voice overs for film and TV, including Devious Beings, Strange Frequency and The 4400

In her live appearances, she sang blues rock ( I was there!), Middle Eastern dream pop,  and other genres , while recording soundtracks for indie films and staring in Facing the Lion (directed, written, and edited by her husband Joe Plonsky).

This is a career that is not only sin fronteras – without borders – but without limits. She easily moves around the world, through languages,  cultures, countries and most importantly,  music genres.  Her ability to blend Middle Eastern electronic, rock, blues and just plain beauty in song is remarkable.

She is also a powerful advocate for women in music and for the power of music in making the world a better place. She makes this real in her music, especially Club Remix Dangerous and Young, a blend of Arabic, Middle Eastern percussion and rhythms, violins, electronic accents and more written by Amanda and Lindsay Gillis. It is exquisitely beautiful, haunting, and yet familiar – truly a sin fronteras composition that allows the listener to absorb the music of another culture and feel at ease with it. 

Her voice, a superb instrument on its own, weaves an soars and sails over the percussion, triggering deep-seated primal feelings. You have heard this voice before in your dreams, your memories, your travels, your music collections. The sheer power of her singing, regardless of language, courses through your DNA, curling and seeping into those parts of you that only come to the surface in ecstasy or terror – when you are truly alive.

Listen to  Club Remix Dangerous and Young with you headphones on, then listen to its sister song Khatiran and Shabban ,also written with Lindsay Neal Gillis ,and feel how Abizaid make you sin fronteras.

For an Amanada Abizaid playlist go to:  https://amandaabizaid.com/ and scroll down.