![]() Like many other contexts, the social meaning of music in Syria is typically discursively constructed around notions of authenticity, cosmopolitanism, and modernity, which can explain why Souleyman’s music is not appreciated by the urban elite. Shifting my focus from the northeast of Syria to its urban centres, the middle classes and the bourgeoisie become the main actors as self-appointed gatekeepers of Syrian cultural exports and guardians of ‘good’ music. Actually, Souleyman and many other musicians of the region owe their fame to the circulation of cassette recordings of their performances at weddings, which are meant to be “presented to the married couple like an aural photo album of their blissful day”. Furthermore, his performances in wedding halls capture these regional and transnational influences and bring them to a local place. His music blends different regional influences to produce the sound of the diverse Jazira region. “I mix many kinds of music Iraqi, Turkish, Kurdish, and the coast” of Syria, he says. ![]() ![]() Souleyman calls it “popular heritage music” (in Arabic, turathi sha'bi). The music mixes this local tradition with Western instruments such as the keyboard. Sublime Frequencies describes Souleyman’s music as an amalgam of classical Arabic mawwal-style vocalization that gives way to high-octane Syrian dabka, Iraqi chobi and a host of Arabic, Kurdish, and Turkish styles. Syrian Music: Between Localism and Elitism The meanings that are projected on the same music at different spaces control the geography of its flow as well as its entrapment. Music critics and fans comment on his music based on orientalist and problematic representations of Arabs and Muslims as dangerous and violent, evidenced by their description of Souleyman’s music as “jihadi techno,” and later as representing a tragic story of war. I elaborate on the ways that listeners use ‘global’ music to construct and affirm social and political positions based on imaginations of ‘the self’ and ‘the other.’ These tensions are reflected in the meanings projected on to Souleyman’s music whether in the Jazira region, where it initially became popular, or Syria’s main cities, where the elite tends to consider his genre of music as the antithesis of ‘the modern’ and of high culture.įinally, in Western contexts, the record label that launched his career uses tropes of hybridity and brands him as authentic in multiple and contradictory ways. I then discuss the industry of global music production, specifically Sublime Frequencies’ conception of the local and global spaces as expressed in its motto of “the aesthetics of extra-geography.” I begin my analysis by contextualizing his music in Syria and examining the meanings ascribed to it there. Informed by two interviews conducted with Souleyman in May 2012 and August 2013, this article focuses on the meanings his music has acquired throughout its global journey. Recently, he performed at the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Norway in December 2013. Over the years, he has performed in prominent music venues and festivals in Europe, North America, and Australia, collaborating with the Icelandic superstar, Bjork, on an album in 2011. His latest album (2013), the first to be recorded in studio, was produced by Ribbon Music, part of the indie label, Domino Recording. Souleyman’s first album was produced in 2006 and he has since worked on three more with the record label, becoming one of its most successful artists. Around that time, a collaborator with American record label, Sublime Frequencies, ‘discovered’ Souleyman’s cassette tapes in Damascus and eventually met him to launch an album to a Western audience. Omar Souleyman became locally famous in Syria in the late 1990s for his performances at weddings in the Jazira region. Since that experience, it became clear to me that Souleyman’s music is a rich case-study implicated in complex politics of representation and spectatorship in both Western and Arab contexts. Seemingly the only Arabs in the club, Souleyman’s concert was odd to us because the new setting of a London club contrasted with how his genre of music in the Middle East is associated with the remote Jazira region and its migrant laborer communities in Lebanese and Syrian cities. Preceded by a Japanese band, Souleyman took the stage wearing the traditional dress of thob and kuffiyya. A group of us eventually went to the concert. I was familiar with Souleyman’s genre of music and knew to correctly associate it with the northeast region of the country, known as the Jazira, but I had never heard of him before. ![]() The email included a link to a YouTube clip of Souleyman singing at a local wedding in Syria. I was surprised when I received an email from a Palestinian friend asking if I would like to go to a concert by a Syrian singer, Omar Souleyman, who was performing at a popular club in central London in 2010. ![]()
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