Full lineup
From Jaffa to London to everywhere.
Lana Lubany was born November 3, 1996, grew up moving between Jaffa and Nazareth with an American mother from New Jersey, and moved to London in 2017 to study songwriting at BIMM Music Institute. She started releasing bilingual English-Arabic music quietly. Then "THE SNAKE" happened. She posted it in March 2023. Her mother's reaction video on TikTok got 5 million views. Hundreds of covers followed. The Guardian named her one of the most promising musical newcomers of the year. The song — built on the biblical snake metaphor as a map of lost innocence — is one of the sharper debut statements from a Palestinian artist in recent memory.
Her EP "YAFA" is named for Jaffa — the Palestinian coastal city her family comes from, now absorbed into Tel Aviv. The title is political without being didactic. She writes songs, not slogans. The identity is in the music itself.
"I want to share the Palestinian culture through music — to bring people closer to our story." — Lana Lubany
Why this stage fits.
Lana is exactly what OC MENA is for: a Palestinian artist building a global career on her own terms, in her own language, with her own story — not as a political statement, but because it is all she has ever been. For Palestinian families at this festival, her set is homecoming. For everyone else, it is an introduction long overdue.
What to expect.
Bilingual, sharp, emotionally direct. The kind of performance that gets louder in the memory after it ends.