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It’s been a turbulent few years for dabke-techno king Omar Souleyman. In 2021 the Syrian singer was arrested in Urfa, the town in southeastern Turkey the place he had been dwelling and working a bakery since escaping Syria’s civil struggle in 2011. Accused of being a member of the Syrian Kurdish Individuals’s Safety Models (YPG) militia, which authorities in Ankara take into account a terrorist group and an extension of the Kurdistan Employees’ Get together (PKK), Souleyman was held for a bit of over 24 hours earlier than being launched with out expenses.
Apart from relating themes of exile on current albums, Souleyman’s music has by no means been overtly political (a selection that has generally drawn criticism from fellow Syrians). However rising up as a Sunni Arab in Syria’s culturally various al-Hasakah area, he absorbed Kurdish, Assyrian, and even Turkish and Iraqi influences, usually singing in Kurdish and collaborating with Kurdish artists, corresponding to his former longtime keyboard participant Rizan Sa’id. 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 historic metropolis—which, in distinction to the repressive regime in Turkey, supplied him solace amid its various cultural milieu—that he dedicates his fifth studio album.
Erbil, his third full-length for Diplo’s Mad First rate (and one among over 500 albums total, should you consider the lore), celebrates the brand new experiences and friendships that Souleyman encountered there. For non-Arabic audio system that’s onerous to know, as a result of the label provides no lyrics or translations—a notable omission, contemplating Souleyman’s worldwide viewers. However in a approach this follows the identical patterns which have characterised his trajectory since he was first plucked from relative obscurity in Syria and offered to the remainder of the world. For a lot of, Souleyman often is the solely dabke artist they ever come throughout. Decontextualized and inscrutable behind his darkish sun shades, he initiatives an aura of unknowability and distance.
Since Souleyman’s worldwide breakthrough in 2007 with Elegant Frequencies’ compilation Freeway to Hassake, he’s amassed a whole bunch of tens of millions of YouTube views and develop into the face of dabke within the Western world, collaborating with a various bunch of artists, from Björk to Gorillaz and 4 Tet. On Erbil, he sticks to the time-tested method that has propelled him up to now: his emotion-filled baritone gliding over a cascade of whirling saz traces, (principally) digital simulations of devices corresponding to oud, mijwiz, and arghul, and rock-solid, trance-inducing beats.
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