It’s been a turbulent few years for dabke-techno king Omar Souleyman. In 2021 the Syrian singer was once arrested in Urfa, town in southeastern Turkey the place he have been residing and operating a bakery since escaping Syria’s civil battle in 2011. Accused of being a member of the Syrian Kurdish Other folks’s Coverage Gadgets (YPG) military, which government in Ankara believe a 15 may organization and an extension of the Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), Souleyman was once held for just a little over 24 hours ahead of being launched with out fees.
Except for relating topics of exile on contemporary albums, Souleyman’s track hasn’t ever been brazenly political (a call that has occasionally drawn grievance from fellow Syrians). However rising up as a Sunni Arab in Syria’s culturally various al-Hasakah area, he absorbed Kurdish, Assyrian, or even Turkish and Iraqi influences, frequently making a song in Kurdish and taking part with Kurdish artists, equivalent to his former longtime keyboard participant Rizan Sa’identity. Since leaving Turkey after his arrest, Souleyman has discovered a brand new house in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish Area, and it’s to this historical town—which, against this to the repressive regime in Turkey, presented him solace amid its various cultural milieu—that he dedicates his 5th studio album.
Erbil, his 3rd full-length for Diplo’s Mad First rate (and considered one of over 500 albums total, when you imagine the lore), celebrates the brand new reports and friendships that Souleyman encountered there. For non-Arabic audio system that’s onerous to understand, for the reason that label provides no lyrics or translations—a notable omission, taking into consideration Souleyman’s world target audience. However in some way this follows the similar patterns that experience characterised his trajectory since he was once first plucked from relative obscurity in Syria and introduced to the remainder of the arena. For plenty of, Souleyman is also the one dabke artist they ever come throughout. Decontextualized and inscrutable in the back of his darkish shades, he tasks an air of mystery of unknowability and distance.
Since Souleyman’s world leap forward in 2007 with Elegant Frequencies’ compilation Freeway to Hassake, he’s collected masses of hundreds of thousands of YouTube perspectives and change into the face of dabke within the Western global, taking part with a various bunch of artists, from Björk to Gorillaz and 4 Tet. On Erbil, he sticks to the time-tested components that has propelled him to this point: his emotion-filled baritone gliding over a cascade of whirling saz traces, (most commonly) digital simulations of tools equivalent to oud, mijwiz, and arghul, and rock-solid, trance-inducing beats.
