What’s in a Name? Everything.

I’ll never write for Rolling Stone. I lack the sonic language required for in-depth analysis: why this record is good and why that record isn’t. I return again and again to the same comparison because it fits—how can I describe the concept of love, or the color blue? We are all floating through existence, hoping we are having a comparable human experience, most secretly terrified that we aren’t. What if—out of the eight billion people on earth right now—I’m the one doing it wrong?

I will not apply musical fitness criteria to Salim Nourallah’s ninth album, simply titled Nourallah (though nothing is ever simple with the gentleman). I will provide what I have: vignettes.

Don’t Fear the Funk

Salim, looking exhausted, sits in the studio after a million takes of “Damage.”
“I can do it maybe once or twice more, and then my voice is shredded,” he sighs.

Later—another scene in the same studio montage—Billy Harvey smiles mischievously.
“I’ve had to teach Salim not to fear the funk.”

And this album fears funk of no description; Billy Harvey’s musical fingerprints are all over it.

Total Recoil

Then, a replay of the song destined to become “I’m in Love With a Nihilist”:

My girl don’t suffer no fools /
Not into standards or your bougie rules

Oh, Salim, no. I recoil from the word bougie the way others flee from moist. But as I sit with the lyric sleeve for Nourallah, I already see the future scene joining my collection: Salim in an Adidas tracksuit or camo pants, thumb poised over his boombox button, locking eyes with me in the crowd, and punching the word harder when its moment arrives.

Once More… with Relish

Watch his gleefully rebellious morning-show “Terlingua” boombox performance, where he was told to ditch his beloved Panasonic. Tell Salim not to do something, and he will do it ten times harder, louder, and with more relish.

The next movie my mind plays is Toronto, February, almost six years ago—watching “Here For the Tears” for the first time. Canada in winter. More snow than this Texan girl had ever seen at once. Cold, beautiful, high on music and camaraderie.

This was our first trip together. We—Salim, my husband, and, peripherally, Rhett Miller—barely knew each other. He offered us trust. In return, he gained a team ready to do whatever it took for the Nourallah cause.

My Own. Personal. Soundbite.

Here is where I would insert my own soundbite—the quote I half-heartedly lobbied to place on the hype sticker Salim asked me to design (bless his heart; this would have taken five minutes with a stranger on Fiverr, but he let me puff out my chest and say I helped).

“What’s in a name? Everything.”
—Liz Berry, Black Lodge Music

“Why the album title? Because my last name means ‘light of God’ in Arabic, and it felt strangely fitting,” Salim said in a recent PSR Bandcamp message.

The polarizing alternative—the title he told me five years ago—Buddha Wooed the Hindus still echoes in the lyrics of the haunting “Buddha Blind.” Nourallah was the more gut-true choice.

I’ve read Salim’s early reflections on his name and on growing up between worlds: one side of his family rooted in far-off Syria, the other in the Midwest. Two feet planted that far apart can’t help but make a person feel torn. Place the confused party in El Paso with a foot-long name, and lifelong chaos is bound to follow.

I’ve carried his merch case through airport security because when he holds it, he’s pulled from the line and searched. I’ve watched the news. I’ve fallen asleep worried for my friend and his beautiful name.

The easiest thing in the world would be to change it. His own grandmother labeled the backs of his childhood photos “Sam.” No one named Salim Nourallah will ever be famous.

Being famous was never the point.

The point, I realized as I sat on my living-room floor cradling a record mailer—Salim’s now-signature sticker-head design on the back flap, embellished with a Santa hat, side one turning on my Audio-Technica—is that a name containing God doesn’t have to explain itself. It only has to be carried.

What this album is: my friend growing older and understanding that mysteries don’t have to be wrestled with. Whatever is in store, he doesn’t need answers or explanations. He can walk peacefully into the future hand in hand with the God, the light, the whatever he has chosen. He doesn’t owe us anything.

One final scene, just for my friend and me: watching Eric hold the copy of Nourallah Salim sent for me to give him. Watching him brush away what may or may not have been a tear as he realizes his sticker-head design lives on the cover—knowing what he’s been through, how much he wants his art to mean something, and understanding that it does.

This snapshot goes into the memory box in my heart: the knowledge that something exists now and exists differently because I loved people and they loved me back.

This is the point.