The rise of Omar Souleyman - from Syrian wedding musician to global rock star

“The kiss from your lips melted mine … You dazzled me and I am so much in love with you…”

The singer Omar Souleyman is typically stony-faced as he lip-syncs these words – in Arabic – in the promo video for Behdeni Nami, the ebullient title track from his forthcoming album.

Wearing shades and a red-and-white ghutra, he spends the video smoking as he drives the highways of eastern Turkey, not far from the border of his homeland, Syria, from which he fled several years ago as the country’s uprising turned into civil war.

The eight-minute-long song is produced by the British experimental producer Four Tet, who also oversaw production on Souleyman’s 2013 album Wenu Wenu. Like that record, Bahdeni Nami is mostly made up of the kind of thumping, loping beat you might hear at a garage club, augmented by a complicated melody, full of half-tones, played on traditional Arabic instruments and synthesisers. There are a couple of ballads that make Souleyman’s voice their focus, but the more upbeat tracks are full of rollicking solos on keyboard and saz (a kind of oud), with vocals that lurch in and out, hollered hoarsely as though addressing a woman walking out the door. Lyrics have been contributed by the poet Ahmad Alsamer, a long-time collaborator of Souleyman’s, and love is the dominant theme.

That’s unsurprising, once you know the story about how the 49-year-old father of nine made the journey from working as a labourer in Ras Al Ain, in Syria’s north-east, to becoming a global pop phenomenon who has remixed Björk tracks, performed at a Nobel Peace Prize concert, and toured the world.

Original article by Jess Holland

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The rise of Omar Souleyman – from Syrian wedding musician to global rock star