At age eight, Shabnam Kamoii fled alone to Germany to escape the dangers of the Iran-Iraq war. She arrived in America six years later as a refugee, bringing only one suitcase filled with remnants of home.
Kamoii, who goes by Shab, has now become one of the fastest-rising global pop stars, embracing her Persian roots and advocating for women empowerment. “One Suitcase,” her newest album released Feb. 12, is a love letter to family and friends who supported her journey as an immigrant.
“I think sometimes we forget how powerful we are as humans, and we're actually shaping our world and our reality,” she told WLRN during a promotional tour across the U.S. for the album. “I just want to give hope to those girls that think they don't have hope.”
Shab was born in Tehran and is one of 13 children. She was raised by her mother after her father, an oil industry executive, passed away during the Iranian revolution when she was six months old.
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She grew up during the Iran-Iraq war, which took place between 1980 and 1988, and witnessed violence on the streets of Iran’s fundamentalist regime. Despite the chaos in her young life, one of Shab’s core memories is dancing to different genres of music with her brothers and sisters in their living room.
Through that, Shab explained, she and her siblings developed their own bubble that protected them from the harsh realities outside their Tehran home.
“I remember when Flashdance came out and we would all be in a little circle, and one by one, [we’d] jump in and show [our] moves,” she said. “ I think that was the pivotal moment when I was just like, ‘Okay, this is fun.’”
As tensions escalated in the country, her mother made the decision to move everyone out for a chance at a new and safe life.
“We knew things were getting worse with the Islamic Republic, unfortunately,” she said. “I remember when I was younger, they would come and shoot at our house. And my mom was just like, ‘Okay, I gotta get these kids out,’ because we were against the regime.”
At eight years old, Shab first moved to Turkey while waiting for her papers to move to Germany. She lived in Ankara for almost a year before emigrating to Europe alone to join her sister, who moved there prior. Shab then attended a boarding school in Germany for four and a half years.
“I didn’t speak a word of German,” she said. “I didn’t even know how to write the alphabet. Everything was just foreign and new to me. But I learned German in less than four months.”
While she enjoyed her experience at boarding school, Shab always found herself missing her mother, who got her green card earlier and moved to Baltimore with her other siblings.
“I didn’t see my mom for almost five years,” she said. “I would miss my mom everyday and I would cry. But I knew that God had a bigger vision for us and protected us to get us out of the country. We were definitely one of the lucky ones.”
At 14, she received the confirmation that her green card was ready and arrived in New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport as a refugee in 1997. She only carried one suitcase filled with everything she owned: her clothes, letters from her family, pictures she had kept, a motivational letter she wrote to herself, and her mom’s shirt that still faintly smelled of her.
Later in the day, Shab boarded a flight to Baltimore to join the rest of her family, reuniting with her mother and her other siblings after nearly six years.
“I was crying. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I felt God gave me a new chance at life and a new beginning.”
After moving to Baltimore, Shab started high school and attended ESOL classes to improve her English. She also took up a waitressing job at her family’s pizza place, growing out of her shyness and interacting with customers who would help her with her English.
“I matured really fast in the restaurant business because I would have professors, doctors, lawyers, and other educated people that I would speak to,” Shab said. “I would always say at the table, ‘My English is not that great.” But if I said something [in English], they were like, ‘Oh, this is how you say it,’ and I would say, ‘Oh my God, thank you. Please correct me.’”
She continued learning English while working three jobs at many family businesses and attended law school right after graduating college. However, she soon dropped out to pursue writing and performing music full-time.
She started writing songs in her native Persian in 2003, but didn’t start recording any until 2015. In 2018, she began collaborating with Grammy-award winning producer Damon Sharpe, who previously worked with Jennifer Lopez and Ariana Grande. Together, Shab and Sharpe created her debut English album, “Infinite Love,” which was released in 2021 and was partly written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The rise to her success came in 2020 with her first English single, “Spell On Me,” which amassed over 2 million views on Youtube and incorporates Persian elements with pop. She initially didn’t want to release the song during the pandemic, skeptical of how her message of being a rising star would come across during a time where many were dying from the illness.
“But then I thought about that moment in Iran, where it was the Iran-Iraq war and we were just in this bubble listening to music, keeping ourselves happy,” Shab said. “I talked to God and then it came in a dream that I have to do this. What the world needs right now is good music and salvation. We just need to dance this thing off.”
After another album and more singles, Shab released “One Suitcase”, filled with 21 songs that tells her journey of finding her identity in a new country. One of her songs, “One Suitcase,” documents her journey as a refugee and is the only ballad on the album.
“It’s the first ballad that I ever sang,” she said, “and even till today, I still get choked up a bit when I sing it.”
Her album, just like her music, advocates for refugee support, women’s empowerment and personal freedom. Shab hopes that her double album could take listeners on a journey filled with a rollercoaster of emotions.
“It's exciting. It's thrilling. It’s sensuous. It gets sexy. It's fun. It's upbeat. It's energetic,” said Shab. “But then, it also has that story of one suitcase, which is a very powerful anthem, and it's heartfelt.”
Shab’s percentage that she earns from the album is going towards “Choose Love,” a London-based charity that provides humanitarian aid to, and advocacy for, refugees and displaced people around the world.
She has also received feedback from fans about how much her music and platform has impacted their views on their life.
“I was just at a gala in Orange County [California] for the Crown Prince of Persia, and I met some really beautiful ladies there,” she said. “And they were just like, ‘Wow, you're so inspiring. Thank you for speaking up.’”
She adds: “When God gives you that platform, you have to do something good for the world. It's not selfish fame, but rather self-serving fame of giving yourself to everyone else.
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