so this omar souleyman guy (RFI, RFD)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgRUHIeaKOk

Track 1 from the Sublime Frequencies CD, "Omar Souleyman- Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria"

An excerpt from the track "Leh Jani" taken from cassette.

Featuring:
Omar Souleyman - vocals
Rizan Sa'id - Keyboard/Rhythms
Mahmoud Harbi - Poetry
And an unknown saz player

"Mahmoud Harbi is a long-time collaborator and the man responsible for much of the poetry sung by Souleyman. Together, they commonly perform the Ataba, a traditional form of folk poetry used in Dabke. On stage, Harbi chain smokes cigarettes while standing shoulder to shoulder with Souleyman, periodically leaning over to whisper the material into his ear. Acting as a conduit, Souleyman struts into the audience with urgency, vocalizing the prose in song before returning for the next verse."

~p~I~m~P~

raaad

yes

love this shit, jealous that the UK gets to see him and we don't.

I know! Fuckers!

(seriously, though)

that sublime frequencies tour has moved on to other parts of europe now:

Wed 10 OSLO, THE VILLA
www.thevilla.no

Thu 11 AARHUS, PAKHUSET
www.ljud.dk

Fri 12 GOTHENBURG, CLANDESTINO FESTIVAL
www.bwanaclub.org

Sat 13 BERLIN, FESTSAAL KREUZBERG
www.clubtransmediale.de / www.festsaal-kreuzberg.de

Sun 14 BERLIN, FESTSAAL KREUZBERG
www.clubtransmediale.de / www.festsaal-kreuzberg.de

Tue 16 COLOGNE, STADTTGARTEN
www.stadtgarten.de / www.myspace.com/reconstructingsong

Wed 17 GENEVA, L'USINE
www.cave12.org

Thu 18 GENEVA, L'USINE
www.cave12.org

Fri 19 BARCELONA, SONAR (OMAR SOULEYMAN ONLY)
www.sonar.es

Sat 20 MADRID, CENTRO DE ARTE DOS DE MAYO
www.madrid.org/centrodeartedosdemayo

Sat 20 TOULOUSE, RIO LOCO FESTIVAL (ALAN BISHOP DJ ONLY)
www.rio-loco.org

Sun 21 LISBON, CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN FOUNDATION
www.filhounico.com

the album is rilly rilly good.

but you all probably know that by now.

I love the two CDs. The new one is even weirder than the first.

They're both carefully curated by Porest / Mark Gergis from dozens of cassettes. Evidently many of the original cassettes are less songs than two neverending workouts, 30 minutes a side, Fela style. The CDs are edited like pop concentrates but I hope there's a chance for some of the cassettes to start turning up somewhere soon.

^^^ would love to hear those. and yes the sf releases are both amazing

The wronger you spell his name, the more clips you find

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijLqrHDXEN4

(that square dance thing they do is called Dabke , hence his second album's name, btw)

been listening to this constantly

Jens Govaert (Belgium) wrote
at 13:11 on 04 June 2009
Looking forward to his performance in Belgium this saturday.. DABKE!!!
Report

Mathias Kostlin (France) wrote
at 14:05 on 31 May 2009
I've just seen him at Villette Sonique. This guy is fat. It was brilliant.

would rock keyboard dude's jacket in first vid

BTWS were playing him the other night; he must be good.

::tongue in cheek::

no, it sounded great.

tbh it doesn't stand out from other dabke stuff i hear. And I hear this music a lot coz my gf's parents are Lebanese and every party you go to, all they play is this kind of stuff. I was telling some of my girlfriend's cousins about souleyman and they were totally not interested because he's Syrian O_o

the cultural elite in Syrian were apparently perplexed by the Sublime Frequencies guys were so enraptured by Omar Souleyman, calling him "taxi driver's music"

Lansob Sherek is an anthem. Dancefloor mayhem.

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damns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruAklSJQ08M

dear ilx poster wilter, please tell me the names of some other dabke stuff i can hear via the internet

saw him live a couple of weeks ago. Party vibes.

give me more taxi driver's music plz
i am so so looking forward to seeing this guy jam the fuck out

This is kind of related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBZ4mUAUCc8

New Omar album right about now: Jazeera Nights

UK tour starting tomorrow: http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/tour/omar2010.html

I guess he cannot get a visa to tour the US. His prior UK tour never came here either. The US is now allowing some Cuban musicians again to tour here but not Syrian ones I guess.

no, he's playing the US.
We got him for SummerStage in Central Park, NYC on June 26 with Tinariwen and Toubab Krewe.

Can you bring him to W. DC too, or is he coming here already?

ha, i'm just the pr guy. i know they're working hard on his visa.

I heard Omar Souleyman for the first time 2 nights ago. Jazeera Nights.

"Mandal/Metel Il Sukkar Ala Il Shai (I Don't Know/Like The Sugar In The Tea)", or as it's known in my household, "that 8th track", is pretty much the jam of all time. It's slower than most of the other songs of his that I've heard (admittedly I've only heard less than 1/500th of his total output, which is apparently over 500 releases), but when he goes "heh-heeey!" and the booty bass drops in, holy shit.

bummed that extra time in the usa game yesterday kept me from seeing omar at central park. anyone see him?

Here's a writeup of his Chicago gig and some tour issues

http://www3.timeoutny.com/chicago/blog/out-and-about/2010/06/chicago-summerdance-omar-souleyman/

i was at the summerstage gig with whiney g; it was good? maybe not as good as I wanted it to be? The crowd was not sure how to handle it. world cup kept the crowd light (maybe 2500?) and they were mostly there to see what the deal was so dancing was minimal. In a club, he would've destroyed. Great voice but it was just him walking around on a giant stage with two guys on synthesizers. needed a light show... though near the end a bellydancer from queens came on and started shakin'.

He ruled in Detroit at the Arab American festival. Yet another reason why it's so awesome that Detroit has such a huge arab american population, beyond all the great restaurants and grocery shopping.

just heard this guy for the first time a few weeks ago. Had planned to go to issue project room tonight but had family situation. friend said it was great though.

A buddy of mine was at that festival in Detroit. Sounds like fun.

he fucking ruled Chicago. but then again, he played in a little slice of Grant Park just off Michigan Avenue. Great crowd, everyone was into it and dancing, young and old. just a perfect scene all around. sucks that the New York gig apparently didn't go off so hot, oh well, that's New York right? you guys take everything for granted. Chicago fucking loved him. rapped a bit with Alvarius B, who was manning the merch. good times

While revered as a legitimate pop star in his native Syria, his bread and butter remains large wedding commissions, where, in accordance with local tradition, he extemporaneously extols the bride, the groom, and their families, usually with humor and awareness of regional current events. His recorded oeuvre is largely made up of cassette releases of these performances, financed by the family of the married couple to bring further glory to their name through cassette sales.

I actually never knew this. "Taxi driver's music" is such a great insult / compliment (delete as appropriate)!

When he play the West?

http://arabicpress.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/omar-souleymans-rise-to-indie-hipster-semifame/

Thought this was interesting, as was Alan Bishop's response in the comments.

Wish he had done more US dates than just Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and 2 NY City shows.

http://www.sublimefrequencies.com/tour/omar2010.html

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BzbVmjyhvHI/S_qhkb5sskI/AAAAAAAABVk/B4EGv5Rgp5U/s400/souleyman_T_1.JPG

In response to this article: http://arabicpress.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/omar-souleymans-rise-to-indie-hipster-semifame/

I enjoyed the article and agreed with what it had to say, but this paragraph:

These types of statements compounded with a tendency for the “Western listener” to understand music on his/her terms and a refusal to accept that music can serve a variety of purposes in different cultures, makes me even more doubtful that music has the capacity to function as a “cultural bridge” of any sort. Listening to music for pure enjoyment is fine, but no one should claim that it brings them closer to understanding a culture.

...seems a little off, especially considering when he played the Arab American fest here, there were huge circles of all sorts of middle eastern people mixed with all sorts of hipsters all dancing together. I don't know if everyone was coming closer to understanding each other's culture, but it still seemed to have more power than this author gives creedence.

both the article & the responses make for really good & interesting reading

Was at both Central Park and Issue shows. Issue (BK) show was best for me because he played in a small courtyard where the reverb made everything sound like it was coming out of minaret loudspeakers. Kind of fuzzy and slightly distorted but amazing sounding. Plus there was a nice crowd dancing thruout the show right in front of the stage so the energy level was kept up. Central Park crowd by the stage seemed to dig the awful opening jam band much more and were mostly confused it seemed.

both the article & the responses make for really good & interesting reading

agreed. Before the European tour last year, Omar & his band had never left the region.

One thing that is great about Omar Souleymann is how full on his music is... for all that the indie hipsters are supposedly embracing him, he is more like a Syrian Scooter than a Syrian [insert name of currently kewl hipster band].

Also, YELLA!

Thinking about hitting the London gig on the 28th. Apparently he will be "Performing both a rare Mawal set and a Dabke/Choubi set". I have the first Sublime Frequencies records but apart from that am pretty ignorant; Dabke/Choubi is what SF have put out, right? The best idea I've found of what Mawal would be is this Youtube; people in the know, is this representative?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzDWceu3n9w

I think the frenetic stuff on the Omar Souleyman records is dabke. I am a bit vaguer on what Choubi music is - the wonderful SF compilation "Choubi Choubi" suggests that it is mainly women saying "Choubi" over a less frenetic Arabic/synthy musical accompaniment. Mawal, no idea, but I am sure it will be awesome.

Saw him last night with Dengue Fever (they played first and Omar and his keyboard player did one song with that Cambodian/Los Angeles group) in W. DC. Souleyman's keyboard player manages to sample and play all kinds of instruments featured in dabke and whatever Arabic dancemusic and disco beats out of his two keyboards, while Souleyman sang, chanted and did his little fist-moving dance movements.

that's pretty much what happens, yes.

he was best in the first four songs of an open rainstorm; that was a series of songs to remember.

DC gig was not too crowded. Indie-rock club 930 did not try to reach out to DC's Arabic-speaking community. Some were there though

Was there an NYC date already and I missed it?

Google seems to suggest Souleyman and Dengue Fever were at Webster hall Monday June 4. Don't see any reviews.

Omar Souleyman -- 2012 Tour Dates
6/4 Webster Hall New York, NY*
6/5 Union Transfer Philadelphia, PA*
6/6 9:30 Club Washington, DC*
9/1-3 Bumbershoot Seattle, WA
9/5-9 MusicFestNW Portland, OR
9/9 Hollywood Bowl Los Angeles, CA w/ Hot Chip and Passion Pit
* - w/ Dengue Fever

Mahmoud Harbi is a long-time collaborator and the man responsible for much of the poetry sung by Souleyman. Together, they commonly perform the "Ataba," a traditional form of folk poetry used in Dabke. On stage, Harbi chain smokes cigarettes while standing shoulder to shoulder with Souleyman, periodically leaning over to whisper the material into his ear.

No Harbi onstage in W. DC

highway to hassake is spectacular. i love the frenetic dabke stuff but the slower sadder songs sung in ataba style, (or "ataaba"?), e.g. "Jalsat Ataba," are really wonderful. i don't know really anything about syrian music though, what are some other artists to explore if i like souleyman and some of the various styles he performs?

other artists or collections, albums, etc.

Can't really help with Syrian debka along these lines (maybe Ali Aldik's 2004 album with "Aloush" would be close?), but you might like this. The sounds get slightly trippier later in the performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjeLyqlBI0

(Really biting my tongue here, to tell you the truth.)

New album "Wenu Wenu," produced by Fourtet, is cool:
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/13/230176762/first-listen-omar-souleyman-wenu-wenu

was worried it might be downtempo but so far this bangs. little bit clean-sounding for me, maybe.

ok this is excellent, need to hear it properly i guess before i judge the sound

some minor intrigue at the bottom of this thread:
S/D : Sublime Frequencies

looks like somebody agrees with me re: the production

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24571762

wonder what it is about omar souleyman in particular. the hype totally passed me by, but i heard one of his songs on some international music radio show and it definitely caught my ear.

really good article from earlier in the year:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/syria-on-the-cusp-of-hipness-then-fading

I've spoken to a couple of Middle Eastern people who are a bit annoyed by his success and the kind of exoticism they detect behind it because he's, they say, just a wedding singer like any other. I dunno what to think about that other than that Middle Eastern weddings must be pretty cool.

I posted the below on the Rolling "world" music 2013 thread;

Jamie XX and Four Tet guy are into "African music" (not sure what genres. Well, Four Tet's Kieran produced Omar Souleyman)

He went on to discuss his current leanings, explaining: "[I've been] picking up old records and a lot of African music. I've been enjoying the melodies and how different the song structuring process is, and especially how danceable it is. I was speaking to [Four Tet's] Kieran Hebden a while ago and he was recommending me a lot of records in that vein... I feel like I've been absorbing a lot of that production wise. All the records that I collect work their way into the music that I make in some way or another, but I think in terms of the African influence it's becoming more visible."

http://pitchfork.com/news/50045-jamie-xx-says-hes-working-with-big-name-pop-artists-on-african-influenced-new-music/

― curmudgeon, Monday, October 21, 2013 2:14 PM (

And yes I know where Syria is...

the new one is really banging + psychedelic and i've listened to some other syrian wedding music that doesn't really compare. i think esp the new album is something very special. some of the older stuff didn't make much of an impression on me.

Yeah instant love for this over here, was blasting it all yesterday

that other dabke compilation that came out was, tho mb not quite as neat, v banging. wld be curious about similar arab music because ive not found owt

yeah i love this, and i didn't really get into dabke 2020

bringing to mind natacha atlas for me which is prob wildly ignorant

prefer Dabke 2020 on initial listens to the new one, but both are v good

there is probably an inevitable tokenism/exoticism attached to any crossover artist - much more so for artists whose audience has been restricted geographically - but it's hard to blame newcomers for not being familiar with a genre they didn't know existed until the crossover artist came along

This is completely banging but I would never in a million years have guessed that Kieran Hebden produced it because there are virtually no concessions to modern dance music and most of the electronic elements sound like they were recorded in 1991.

i see what you did there

there are virtually no concessions to modern dance music and most of the electronic elements sound like they were recorded in 1991.

I don't know enough about back then to weigh in, or about older Souleyman releases but I see that a Sublime Frequencies guy who once worked with Souleyman is asserting that the new one is not as good as older ones, as is someone from Quietus. I saw Souleyman live once and have heard some of his old and some of his new stuff (and similar sounds from others), but have not listened close enough to pick up the trainspotting differences.

so someone who's not working with him anymore and whose label is in dispute with him is claiming his new stuff isnt as good then

Per that comment from s1ocki, this article, which I should have linked yesterday and which you are all to read right now:

http://www.spin.com/articles/omar-souleyman-wenu-wenu-feature/

...makes it clear that Sublime Frequencies, at the least, has a vested interest in saying what it does.

And as NickB pointed out a bit upthread, Doran's post the other day has a little more context. It's worth noting that he says he's good with both labels involved, so I'm not taking sides either -- but as Doran says, there's something worth noting here.

I wish I had seen the the first version of the Spin piece

[UPDATE: It has come to our attention that representatives for the Sublime Frequencies label were not given an appropriate opportunity to respond to accusations made in quotes in this article. In the interest of fairness, we have removed a paragraph and significantly altered a second. SPIN regrets the error.]

huh

That is VERY interesting. In the original story, there was a statement about how SF refused to comment, or something similar.

lolling at Matt's comment that went over my head the first time.

thank god we are all able to make up our own minds about the quality of the album w/out SF letting us know what to think -- or do i misunderstand the nature of the controversy here?

It is a shame this sideshow could be giving people a bad impression of the album because it is excellent.

the real shame is how many sheeple on this thread are letting SF tell us what to think

Who is doing that? People can discuss the merits of new and old efforts by any artists without being pawns of the old label the artist was once on.

Plus the SF stuff is just to some degree gossip that's easier to talk about than comparing various dabke artists and how their beats are made

interesting bit about in there about how Four Tet didn't touch the music much (at all?), just essentially lent his name to it and ensured that somebody else didn't overproduce it or fuck it up.

Slocki was lampooning/misreading mordy's comment xp

ok

oops

seeing Souleyman and Four Tet in Lisbon on Friday night tbh

I do think that Mark Gergis's comments were a lot milder than people are making out. He's essentially only said that the new album isn't as much to his taste as the older, noisier recordings that he licensed to release in the West. I'm finding it hard to work out what the problem with this is. In fact I think it stands to reason give SF's whole aesthetic. I think it's important to bear in mind that Gergis worked on the first lot of releases over a period of a decade or more from 200 different albums on cassette - surely the actions of a genuine archivist with a passion for the music not someone trying to make a quick buck. But the noisier stuff that they put out, reflects only a small part of Souleyman's prolific output. Gergis realised that a certain sound the singer had been using several years previously but already abandoned in Syria would resonate with Western audiences and persuaded him to go back to it. When the group first toured in Europe they were persuaded to return to old instruments and songs etc. Therefore I think that aesthetic conflict was always a possibility (I've seen roughly the same thing happen with about four other MENA artists in the last year). But it's too much of a leap to suggest that this comment made by one person in an interview that not that many people read amounts to a bitter campaign by a record company to derail someone's career! My understanding of it is that Gergis/SF are gutted at the turn of events and would really like to work things out with him but can't - for one reason or another - speak directly to him. I don't want to/won't speak for other people and clearly a lot has happened in the last week that I'm not party to or have only heard one side of, but this is my understanding of things. (I read the original Spin piece and wondered how long it would remain up in that form as it seemed incredibly one sided. Of course I would have loved to have presented both sides of the story on the Quietus but we've had the other party take massive umbrage at what seems like a mild and absolutely fair enough declaration of personal taste and now can't.)

its really weird to me that you're taking heat for a comment someone made in an interview you published (and one that is far from like, being too inflammatory to print)

. I think it's important to bear in mind that Gergis worked on the first lot of releases over a period of a decade or more from 200 different albums on cassette - surely the actions of a genuine archivist with a passion for the music not someone trying to make a quick buck.

I know for a fact that is the truth.

That is VERY interesting. In the original story, there was a statement about how SF refused to comment, or something similar.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, October 23, 2013 3:41 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

let me take a wild guess. all the lines accusing SF of various things in the original story were quotes from his new manager, all of which were redacted to the letter once the author actually interviewed Mark.

granted both Milton and I have been friends w/Mark for 10+ years

Don't really know what to make of the management-related controversy, especially given that we'll probably never hear anything from the man himself, but I'm not convinced by the argument that the new album has glossed things up and in doing so lost all the magic. It's still a pretty out-there album by any "world music" measure, not like he's duetting with Peter Gabriel or w/e.

it sounds pretty much the same but with better (depending on your taste) mixing & mastering.

yep. I'm kind of wary when people fetishise lo-fi recording - it can definitely add an edge, but who's to say the artist shouldn't get to try out other opportunities.

You are wary of ppl with different aesthetics than you? You are so right. They can be evil and stupid.

i agree that artists should be given other opportunities. i love king sunny ade's raw and lo fi early recordings and also love the ones where island put him in a slick paris studio and incorporated lots of electronics. personally i find the new omar souleyman album a little disappointing sonically and also with regard to the variation in the music. it was an interesting experiment but it feels like a little of the soul of his music got lost along the way.

Eh. I don't care whether anyone likes the new or the old stuff better. xp

that larb piece is great

There's just an element of "Keep Omar Weird" in some of the discourse (see also Penman's review in the Wire). auto-xp

again, some people have aesthetics that prefer "weirdness" in music

that wasn't penman

ah? I read it a month or so ago, must have got mixed up.

penman wrote the sly stone thing in the same issue

yr right, Clive Bell it was.

it's more complicated than just aesthetics though, right? it's interesting that both sides are concerned with commodification in a way. like this quote from one of the SF dudes:

“It goes from being an underground thing to a cultural-export situation,” he explains, “Once it becomes part of an industry the commoditization of the sound, which is a very normal, almost obligatory part of modern music, the music loses the urgency and the heat that originality made it good. The raw and incendiary message becomes smoothed-over and polished and neatly-packaged for a Western audience.”

versus neatly packaging his music for a Western audience interested in weird, underground, lo-fi records. i'm not taking sides here, but these are the kinds of issues that always come up when marketing/selling non-western culture to a western audience, right? things always start to get weird when real success/money comes into play.

totally. especially when the aesthetic preferences of the "importers" clash with those of the actual artists, which seems to have happened to some degree here. it's interesting.

it's also interesting in terms of how a lot of the music in question is "exotic" interpretations of Western music -- so the cultural exchange is already complicated

"Warni Warni" sounds great!

The arseholes from the record company are only complaining because they are not making as much money out of him as they previously did.

did they tell you this?

That would be crazy though. A higher profile for Souleyman means better back catalogue sales. xp

sarahell do you like the new album?

haven't heard it

oh ok cool

the u.s.-indie-centric notion of an authentic underground sure looks like a form of cloistered Puritan hypocrisy in this kind of exchange. that's why i liked the la review of books piece upthread so much, it gets at the bigger picture which is a mix of different but related truth contexts and how they do or don't work in tandem.

The arseholes from the record company are only complaining because they are not making as much money out of him as they previously did.

Don't buy this - if you're mainly interested in money you don't spend five years trying to break a Syrian wedding singer in the West.

xp - oh i thought you were talking about larb - the food

Yeah right seandalai he is just some modest wedding singer who they have been running at a loss as some kind of favour! Yeah Sure!

xp lol

xp - I don't know about the profits/financials for Sublime Frequencies, but I am familiar with how much money and time Mark, personally, invested in Omar and promoting his work

All I heard was blah blah blah..

look if you want to make assumptions based on superficial cynicism, go ahead, but it's pretty stupid to maintain those assumptions when someone is telling you that they actually know the truth.

nb, tl;dr below, may be strawmanning, had a bunch of ideas and a bong and decided to combine the two so plz insert ymmv, imho, idk what i'm saying here as appropriate:-- I don't want to argue that there aren't complexities in recontextualizing a syrian wedding singer for a western popular audience, but why does raising this discussion always seem to skew towards negative interpretations? "exotic" seems to connote a kind of fetishized otherness, as though souleyman were being commodified. the guy of course is already always 'commodifying' himself - he supports his family through playing music professionally, first in weddings and now for hip western record labels. moreover tho it's not like his popularity is this rough, depersonalized exotic figure - i think his coming over has been very centered in the context of his original performances. his audience knows this was originally wedding music, they know his story, and bc of current foreign events they might even know more about syria than they've ever known. also tho, i feel like we don't bat an eyelid when western music is removed from its context and dispersed to non-western countries. we even assume that this expected - either bc of our dominant western aesthetics (lolz, jk) or bc the west is an economic hegemon. but music always has this loose porous relationship between communities; in some aspects souleyman is colonizing a western audience. he's being appreciated as an artist and that is exactly what he is.

agree with that

I distractedly listened to teh NPR stream - sounded good, not very different from his old stuff - but maybe I need to hear this on proper home speakers to appreciate the commercial glossing up.

i feel like we don't bat an eyelid when western music is removed from its context and dispersed to non-western countries

Yeah there's not much of this sort of handwringing around, say, afrobeats (which is largely made up of African pop, dancehall, US hip-hop and London dance music in varying proportions). But maybe that's because we're used to the idea of a constant cultural exchange with the bigger African countries. Physical exchange as well, most people who spend time in a big UK or US city will have encountered someone from Nigeria or Ghana whereas the same might not be true of someone from Syria, many people have had zero exposure to Syrian music, so people get this idea of it being this fragile bird that needs to be protected. As far as I'm aware there isn't anyone saying "Omar Souleyman is the only good Syrian music" or worse still "Omar Souleyman transcends Syrian music".

I do get the sense he's a guy you need to see live to see him at his best, though.

yep. live with a hyped enough crowd, his shows have been some of the most energetic/fun/dancey/manic shows i've ever seen.

that Christgau/Spin review is good, but lol @ this line:

the programmed drums generate rhythms that few American tub-thumpers could map, much less replicate

i like the music but it's not exactly rhythmically complicated.

I didn't see the other article until after the edit -- what was removed?

Hebden seemed a bit upset yesterday: "Some of these pitchfork writers are such fucking amateurs. Facts all over the place."

drama aside this is a great album

Yeah there's not much of this sort of handwringing around, say, afrobeats (which is largely made up of African pop, dancehall, US hip-hop and London dance music in varying proportions).

There's actually a significant difference. I don't know much about Afrobeats, but as I understand it, it's something that grew up within a British immigrant community. Souleyman in the west functions as an individual transplanted into a foreign environment. It's not particularly a Syrian American or Arab American community supporting him (correct me if I'm wrong), and his sound isn't an immigrant hybrid. This seems like the kind of stuff you'd hear at dinner concerts, with tabouleh and shawarma and plentiful bottles of arak, but that's not the circuit he's performing in in the U.S. Or do they make some concessions to those things at these shows?

Not that I feel really strongly about these issues. I like Souleyman. I've heard somewhat similar (and also entirely different) Arab music I like more.

I don't think much of him as a vocalist.

the few other bits of dabke I've heard haven't had as good vocals as his stuff, is there someone w/ similar stoic anguish you wld recommend?

I don't really listen to a lot of debka per se, or when I do it's usually by someone who performs a wide range of genres. So not really.

Would much rather listen to Mohammed Assaf's debka, but that's an entirely different thing. Doesn't have the trippiness of what Souleyman is doing. I have a live recording by Saleh Abdel Gafor which has some of that quality. It's not debka, but feels related. Not sure about the stoic anguish thing though. I wouldn't have thought of that as a description of Souleyman. Honestly I don't go looking for or expect stoic anguish in Arab vocalists. Maybe I'd describe Marcel Khalife that way at times, but if you know him, you know he sounds nothing like Souleyman.

I don't know how to just put a file up somewhere any more. Those sites all ask for too much involvement at this point.

I like some of Syrian debka star Ali Al Deek's music too (especially the album Aloush), but he may be too light for Souleyman fans.

(Wouldn't exactly call him a vocal virtuoso either.)

wenu wenu might be my favorite song of the year

I really like the four tet dude's production on this, subtle and relatively faithful to the style. Certainly "glossed up" but not in an obnoxious way like one of those putumayo records.

and the keyboard sound totally kills

^^otm on both posts. The keyboard solo on "Ya Yumma" is a scorcher. My heart starts racing when Souleyman kicks the song off with his jalla-jalla... Don't care about vocal virtuosos, I just love the grit in his vocals. Makes me want to smoke a cig with him :)

One thing that is great about Omar Souleymann is how full on his music is... for all that the indie hipsters are supposedly embracing him, he is more like a Syrian Scooter than a Syrian [insert name of currently kewl hipster band].

Syrian Scooter you say??? *downloads furiously*

I was actually saying to some friends a while back that if Omar Souleyman and Scooter teamed up we would have some next level fun amazingness. Throw in Fatman Scoop and the world would implode.

I don't know if Fatman Scoop would be willing to rock the jam once again

and the keyboard sound totally kills

― signed, J.P. Morgan CEO (Hurting 2), Monday, December 23, 2013 12:07 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally. really digging this whole album

i have no qualms about the cleaner production, i think the record sounds great. i like this album a lot and i still like highway to hassake a lot, they are different and the production differences don't bother me much. the music is great on both albums.

i do feel like his vocals were stronger on the earlier stuff, though, i imagine just as a result of age (now 15-20 years after those early recordings e.g. "leh jani" were first made). i felt like like sang with a greater urgency & fierceness on the earlier records that seems toned down here, not intentionally. his voice just seems older and somewhat less energetic. it's still very strong though.

free show at millennium park in chicago this monday-- stoked!!!!!

oh shit

you are gonna wenu like crazy i bet

damn i've never listened to jazeera nights before, it's outstanding

"nahy" from wenu wenu is such a jam

also new track, new album coming, and a tour

http://pitchfork.com/news/58990-omar-souleyman-teams-with-four-tet-modeselektor-black-lips-for-new-album-bahdeni-nami

03-26 Boise, ID - Treefort Music Festival
03-27 Athens, GA - Slingshot Festival
03-28 Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival
05-21 Halifax, Nova Scotia - Obey Convention 8
05-22 New York, NY - Le Poisson Rouge
05-23 Los Angeles, CA - Jewels Catch One
05-30 Bristol, England - Colston Hall
06-06 Copenhagen, Denmark - Distortion Festival
06-12 Toronto, Ontario - Bestival Toronto
06-26 Beuningen, Netherlands - Down The Rabbit Hole
07-11 Trencin, Slovakia - Pohoda Festival
07-16 Dour, Belgium - Dour Festival /

https://soundcloud.com/monkeytownrecords/omar-souleyman-enssa-el-aatab-prod-by-modeselektor/s-ghd5W guess it is not super new, came out a few weeks ago, it is very good imo

worth traveling up to NY to see him? srsly debating it now.

I would!

I am really digging this new tune

ehhhhh tbh seeing him live was pretty underwhelming

although i did see him at a huge free late afternoon outdoor show, i would be willing to see him a 2nd time in a club setting

i've seen him three times and all of them at large outdoor spaces; i think his energy would be GREATLY improved at a small club like Poisson Rouge. I bet that'll be rocking

When I went to see him last year I hoped/expected to be able to see Rizan Sa'id do his magic on the synthesizer (as my friend did when he saw him a couple of years earlier) but it turned out there was 'just' someone who controlled a laptop from which the music was generated/streamed. Bit of a bummer, really. He's a great performer though.

Rizan was at the gig i attended, but both were both dwarfed by the enormous stage they came nowhere near occupying

i missed him in Chicago last year but finally saw him at Big Ears last week and the crowd was so into it. it was a smallish space (not an outdoor festival) and everyone was dancing. like every single person except for the man next to me so i gently elbowed him away

my question: will someone please recommend me more music that sounds like "atabat"? iirc he didn't play any slow songs live because it probably would have killed the mood or caused someone to spontaneously combust.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESh_qPZFLiI

Wow, this new album. Can't put my finger on it but it's both super familiar yet a lot better than Wenu Wenu

oh I didn't realise he had a new one, cool!

what do you all think of bahdeni nemi?

seems less urgent than wenu wenu and especially the SF releases but i am enjoying it

who's heard the new one?

"Atabat" from the first one came on in the car today, I'd forgotten what a jam that one is.

hmm

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/syrian-musician-omar-souleyman-held-on-terrorism-charges-in-turkey

Terrible. Free Omar!

yes

update! he's free - after being sent to "a detention center for people due to be deported"

https://ra.co/news/76422

now thats the news we wanted to hear!

also this:

He has lived in Turkey since the onset of the Syrian civil war, running, among other things, a free bakery in Urfa.

Still, just like in China, you can't become too popular without getting your chains rattled by the government every now and then, apparently. :-/