Non Fiction
Issue #2
Review of Omar Souleyman: “Highway To Hassake”
(Sublime Frequencies Records, CD)
The ‘normal’ Sublime Frequencies found-sound compilations are put on hold here for a ‘real’ album of sorts, a collection of studio and live tracks of the past eleven years from Syria’s Dabke legend Omar Souleyman. Dabke is the traditional folk music of the region surrounding Syria; Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and so on. This is, on the whole, boisterous and pacy music, incessantly driven by loping percussion riding on top of a persistent kick drum, constantly recovering from falling over itself in a downhill gallop, much like the Levantine Dabke line dancing that accompanies it. Incidentally, Dabke translates from the Arabic as “stomping of the feet”, something hard to resist here. The shrill keyboard solos, overdriven, lightning fast and pitch-bent to hell and back, could well be seen as an influence on black metal riffs, and tunes like Leh Jani (When I Found Out) sport a beat that reggaeton could have drawn on, slowed, and made a staple of the scene.
In contrast, the music elsewhere seems to employ such aspects of western music as dub reggae, with ululations space-echoing, detached, over the beat; even waltzy new romantic pop on Atabat, which is swiftly wrenched back in Syria’s direction by a devastating saz line from Hamid Souleyman. Deranged circus pomp and organ stabs march us at the double into Jani, recorded live at a wedding, mic feedback and all, and Souleyman breaks from the lyrics to bless both family tribes present before launching back into his hectic style. It makes the mind reel to compare this first hit, a fervent song about a beautiful woman, to the enthusiasm of your average UK wedding band.
Yet not all the songs are so manic: Jalsat Atabat, for instance, a complaint to his parents about not being able to marry the woman he loves, smoulders with a steady Iraqi choubi rhythm and lamenting reeds, but without the mournful, filmic self-consciousness of, say, Djivan Gasparyan. The liner notes provide a brief insight into the content and the lyrics, which often gives the apparently upbeat and triumphant songs such as Alkhatiba Zaffouha a darker, more melancholy edge- “they’re celebrating my fiancée’s wedding- or- celebrating in disappointment”. These lyrics are written in part by Mahmoud Harbi, a poet who, as the liner notes assert, “chain smokes cigarettes while standing shoulder to shoulder with Souleyman, periodically leaning over to whisper the material into his ear.”
Despite all looking frighteningly similar (dark moustache: check; square jaw: check; furrowed brow: check), pictures of the band are lovingly, and somehow humorously, assembled, even featuring a highly camp close-up photo of Harbi whispering in Souleyman’s ear. Once again, Alan Bishop et al at Sublime Frequencies have achieved an outstanding recording of mostly unheard music, the tracks featured giving a proper scope and depth to the artist. Dabke has until now not been “deemed serious enough for export by the Syrians,” but the album seems to skirt around issues such as these, instead opting to give it to us straight up and down like six o’clock; it avoids patronising, gushy sentiment and doesn’t tell us this music is ‘life-affirming’ or ‘emotional’ as too much so-called world music feels it necessary to. It is such details as the thanks to “our police escort in Hassake” that remind the listener that this music is very real, very upfront, and not just for western consumption.