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Tour Dates
01/16/15 Sydney, Australia "Sydney Festival"
01/17/15 Hobart, Australia "Mona Foma Festival" Read More
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Omar Souleyman is without a doubt, the best Syrian techno-folk Electro-shaabi artist we’ve ever seen—
…okay, okay, he’s also the only artist of that ilk we’ve ever seen as well, but his recent performance at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis was still entertaining enough to warrant the accolade.
Souleyman, who sings in Arabic and Kurdish, has gathered quite a recent U.S. following of late, after getting on the bill of high profile alternative music festivals, remixing Bjork, and receiving praise from the likes of NME, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone, who deemed his sound as “hot and fresh” “ EDM-grade belly dancing music”.
From Northeastern Syria, Souleyman began his singing career in 1994, mostly singing at weddings and claims over 500 studio and live albums under his name, most of which are the singer’s recordings presented to the married couple, which are then copied and sold at local kiosks and bazaars – the Middle Eastern Mix Tape network of sorts.
East met West as well, with DJ Don Cuco spinning techno world beat before, between, and after the live sets as well as with local opener Vacation Dad, who knob-twirled his version of psych/cosmic/afrobeat/trop-funk, spinning some selections from 2012’s LIVIN (MJ MJ Records).
Shaabi and dabke are types of traditional music heard at social gatherings in the Middle East and Souleyman takes those traditional folk songs and supercharges them with stomping synth bass and hookah-smokin’ Electro-rhythms, compliments of keyboardist/composer Rizan Sa’id, who is the “Lewis” to his “Macklemore”.
His breakthrough album, Wenu Wenu (Ribbon Music) wisely was produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) who knows a thing or two about dance music himself. Souleyman’s all-too-brief 45 min. set started slowly, with an over bundled up Sa’id (I suppose if I was from the desert, I’d be colder in this climate too) playing slow Arabic rhythms from his layers of keyboards while Souleyman vocalized from backstage out of view and as textured color images flashed on the screened backdrop.
Sa’id was the secret weapon of the act, standing almost still and looking near-emotionless throughout (similar to Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys), but so responsible for the overall sound that had a younger multi-national audience at the Cedar dancing for most of the set.
Souleyman dressed in a dark robe, head scarf, and dark sunglasses, stalked the stage from left to right like any Western rapper, and goaded the audience into clapping along, when he wasn’t himself singing. Songs like ‘Leh Jani’, ‘Yagbuni’, and international hit ‘Khattaba’ had everyone on the floor thinking they were Middle Eastern for a night, much like everyone being is ‘Irish’ and celebrating on St. Patrick’s Day.
Similar to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who brought his traditional Qawwali music to the western masses with great success, Souleyman seems poised to do similar with his modern shaabi/dabke. After thanking the crowd in at least four languages and waving and saying “bye bye”, Souleyman and Sa’id were gone-- leaving the building almost immediately, like a haboob wind, to storm their next tour stop. East had met West.
…okay, okay, he’s also the only artist of that ilk we’ve ever seen as well, but his recent performance at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis was still entertaining enough to warrant the accolade.
Souleyman, who sings in Arabic and Kurdish, has gathered quite a recent U.S. following of late, after getting on the bill of high profile alternative music festivals, remixing Bjork, and receiving praise from the likes of NME, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone, who deemed his sound as “hot and fresh” “ EDM-grade belly dancing music”.
From Northeastern Syria, Souleyman began his singing career in 1994, mostly singing at weddings and claims over 500 studio and live albums under his name, most of which are the singer’s recordings presented to the married couple, which are then copied and sold at local kiosks and bazaars – the Middle Eastern Mix Tape network of sorts.
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DJ Don Cuco
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Shaabi and dabke are types of traditional music heard at social gatherings in the Middle East and Souleyman takes those traditional folk songs and supercharges them with stomping synth bass and hookah-smokin’ Electro-rhythms, compliments of keyboardist/composer Rizan Sa’id, who is the “Lewis” to his “Macklemore”.
His breakthrough album, Wenu Wenu (Ribbon Music) wisely was produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) who knows a thing or two about dance music himself. Souleyman’s all-too-brief 45 min. set started slowly, with an over bundled up Sa’id (I suppose if I was from the desert, I’d be colder in this climate too) playing slow Arabic rhythms from his layers of keyboards while Souleyman vocalized from backstage out of view and as textured color images flashed on the screened backdrop.
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Omar Souleyman
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Souleyman dressed in a dark robe, head scarf, and dark sunglasses, stalked the stage from left to right like any Western rapper, and goaded the audience into clapping along, when he wasn’t himself singing. Songs like ‘Leh Jani’, ‘Yagbuni’, and international hit ‘Khattaba’ had everyone on the floor thinking they were Middle Eastern for a night, much like everyone being is ‘Irish’ and celebrating on St. Patrick’s Day.
Similar to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who brought his traditional Qawwali music to the western masses with great success, Souleyman seems poised to do similar with his modern shaabi/dabke. After thanking the crowd in at least four languages and waving and saying “bye bye”, Souleyman and Sa’id were gone-- leaving the building almost immediately, like a haboob wind, to storm their next tour stop. East had met West.
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Omar Souleyman at Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis (05 December 2014) |
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