Sometimes the best way to look forward is to look back first—and that’s one of the strategies Emel Mathlouthi employs on her new album, Ensen. Although her 2012 debut, Kelmti Horra, found the Tunisian singer and multi-instrumentalist exploring a variety of vocal styles, some influenced by western pop and folk, she’s now letting her North African roots step up, as she says in a telephone conversation from New York City.

“I wanted to give a new challenge to myself, and I tried to really, really search in the depths of myself to see what kind of interactions I could bring,” Mathlouthi tells the Straight, speaking in fluent and fast-paced English. “So I tried to imagine a Berber heritage in my vocals, something that could be raw but very powerful and almost, like, transcendent.”

That she succeeded is obvious: on record as well as in concert, the emotional content of her songs needs little translation. And the 35-year-old musician has also progressed along another path: bringing Tunisian music into the 21st century through state-of-the-art electronic accompaniment.

“Something that the western side of the music business doesn’t realize is that we do actually evolve, in North Africa,” she says. “We create; we can be avant-garde, too, and pioneers. I think that makes us maybe sometimes a little more interesting. Our identity is not just one identity. I’m Tunisian, but I’m also very eclectic. I have been inspired and influenced by so many artists and so many different musics from around the world—and that kind of curiosity, I think, is visible now in my work. My work doesn’t just translate one part of the world; it’s a cocktail of different landscapes.”

Electronic music, Mathlouthi continues, is a way of expanding the sonic possibilities open to her—and definitely not a refutation of traditional styles. “When you play with acoustic instruments,” she explains, “you can offer a very interesting range of textures and soundscapes—but imagine multiplying that range forever, with the computer and with the pedals and with all the effects. So we had a lot of fun translating the instruments that are coming from my region, like all the tribal percussion, to the electronic setup.”

And with EDM the world’s most popular musical idiom, the singer is also conscious that it’s a good way of ensuring that her message will be heard. Mathlouthi got an early lesson in how music can change the world when her song “Ya Tounes Ya Meskina” (“Poor Tunisia”) was adopted as an unofficial anthem of the Arab Spring, and while the political messages on Ensen are more subtle, they’re no less potent.

Standout track “Ensen Dhaif” (“Human, Helpless Human”), for instance, is accompanied by a video that alludes to torture scenes from Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison while making a larger point about the way that we are all imprisoned within capitalism’s economic cage.

“That song was written without any conscious understanding of what it was really saying,” Mathlouthi admits. “But as years went by, I started realizing that it was about a system that empowers the richer minority and keeps billions of workers around the world in never-ending slavery, modern slavery. And it’s not only about workers who have difficult and ugly jobs. Even people who seemingly love their jobs never have time for their passions, for their lives, for their dreams.”

She’s no different, Mathlouthi adds—except that she’s able to bring her dreams to the stage in a way that will inspire her listeners to seek their own forms of liberation, whether in the streets of Tunis or the clubs of North America.

Emel Mathlouthi plays the Rio Theatre on Sunday (May 14).