Electric Stallion Ride:the Omar Souleyman hype

A few years ago, my partner and I took that first vacation away from the kid by running around Washington, DC during a conference one of us was supposed to be attending.   While in the  capital, we spiced up our museum visits by eating things we don't usually eat at home.  Thus we found ourselves eating Ethiopian breakfast in Adams-Margan neighborhood one morning.  I remember my migas-like plate of orangish fried bread chunks as greasy yet yummy, but what stands clearly in both of our minds was what was on the TV overhead.  They were playing Al Jazeera English, not CSPAN or morning variety shows.  Not being a televsison watcher and certainly not having cable, this novely felt a bit, well, transgressive and edgy.

Around that time I tracked down the second album by French-Algerian hybrid band Orange Blossom.  The cover art was partly in Arabic.  That was a first  and again, it felt just a little bit extra cool. 

Now I'm sure Al Jazeera is on the TV set at many businesses across the street from the Cedar and  some of  those feeling seems rather dated.  In the intervening years  I called Kasbah Rockers' self titled debut my 2009 album of the year last year, got into 70's Turkish guitar wanking and tracked down old Arab-American rock like The Devil's Anvil.

Come to think of it though, I did have to special order most of that music mentioned above, so maybe it's me, not the culture that's trying to learn more about the modes and rhythms that attract me to rockin' versions of Middle Eastern music.  No, I think our culture is curious, if cautious, to know what's going on over there.  It's a classic historical scenario: two nations make war on each other for years, followed by a mutual lovefest in the arts and culture. Witness the summer-long stay on the CMJ world charts of discs like Spy from Cairo's Secretly Famous and the Pomegranates compilation of " Persian Pop, Funk, Folk, And Psych Of The 60s And 70s."

Enter Omar Souleyman into the Euro-American musical consciouness.  Suddenly the guy is a poster child for Syrian music and everybody wants to shake it to the dabke and choubi grooves.  Everybody from  Bjork  (whatever that signifies!) to Pavement is on the bandwagon.

Is it fair for me to wonder, why this guy?  Why now?

Maybe it's the look; he's very recognizable in his red and white  mawal, white  baglama and square shades.  Anyone would see Souleyman and think "Middle Eastern." One online fan was worried that his music would get co-opted and end up on a McDonald's commerical.  I say, How cool would that be? You'd see a guy in a keffiyah and think "junkfood" rather than "P.L.O.!"

He is extremely prolific; back home in Syria he has released hundred of cassettes, most of them recordings of live shows.  Word online says his tapes are ubiquitous there.  All of his wider relases have been made by Sublime Frequencies, and they are all compilations of recordings of live shows over the years. This fact probably contributes to the frenetic urgency of the tracks.

True confession: it took me a while to get through the entire album.  I was usually ready for a break after three or four tunes, they just keep going up and up, faster and faster.  Maybe if I was dancing wildly instead of driving down I-94?  Jazeera Nights is basically ramped up wedding music, a fast but not particularly deep beat underlaying saz and high speed keyboard riffs with samples of more trad wind instruments tossed in.  The sound is not nearly as thick and chewy as Kasbah Rockers, Aisha Kandisha`s Jarring Effects had chubbier beats 17 years ago. (Who knew?  AKJE was an early project of the Kasbah Rockers team...)

I don't think I'm the only one who gets a little kicked in the head by a whole disc of full throttle Omar Souleyman. Tiny Mixtape says,"His music is certainly that hypnotic, that powerful, that annoying that you could not resist. I’ll admit, if you go with 40 minutes of Dabke 2020, you might need a break. And I doubt you will pull this out for the next Super Bowl party. But, if you listened to Radio Java more than once or liked Bombay 2: Electric Vindaloo, you might have enough international music savvy to hold onto the reins of Omar Souleyman’s electric stallion ride aboard the platinum chariot of Syrian pop sensationalism."

Now there's a metaphor for ya.

American and European reviews don't quite know what do with this stuff; many of them have no frame of reference for Arab music of any kind, so you end up with some crazy metaphors.

"Beats like the jerry-rigged machine gun fire of exurban guerrila fighters. Cosmopolitan party music from the end times. The death rattle of globalisation, echoing across the scarred plains of bomb-ravaged dreamscapes." from The Quietus.

"you can still sense in Jazeera Nights a gangsta-ass boldness and flamboyant machismo" said  The Stranger.

"fiery and unusually futuristic sound. Their musical purpose is rooted in functionality; they play heavy dance music at numerous weddings and other celebrations, but in the most exotic manner possible, to western sensibilities anyway."- boomkat.com

"exhibiting the intensity of teenage wasps attending an illegal rave in a bucket; all overseen by Souleyman’s gleeful yelps and boisterous singing.  He is the conductor and controller of this harmonious-hot-rod, unafraid to travel at breakneck speed through the winding mountain paths."The Line of Best Fit

Even the staid BBC called Jazeera Nights "relentless" and "battering" and noted that he has an "undeniable alien cool."

A review in Dusted  suffers from a bit of that ambivelance. "on Dabke 2020, Souleyman sounds even more like a Middle Eastern DJ Kool. He’s always been more the hypeman than the singer, and here he’s even less melodic and more pumped. Likewise, the music is even more raw and bloody. Sometimes, it’s almost too abrasive to be party music. (Almost.) The high-speed machine-gun funk of “I Will Make a Trap,” for instance – I mean, it’s practically spazzcore."

Actual interviews with the man himself are almost as difficult to find as images of him without his standard getup.  This one in Culturebase.net interview has some interesting cultural background about growing up in the northeast of Syria.

In The Quietus link above, "he claimed that dabke had been increasing in speed by 10 bpm every year, but in order for that to be true there would have to be some tracks here that were 150 bpm faster than some others, which clearly isn't the case."

For an interesting counterpoint to all the hype, read the Arabic Press "News in Arabic " article and comments on the various Western reviews of his work and how they miss some major points. It also points out that while attempting to be complimentary some of the reviews are occasionally just exoticizing music from a "forbidden "region.  Finally, clearly there are a lot of cultural things we are missing in the lyrics as per this translation with lengthy notes. (from the Arab Song Lyrics and Translation blog.)

Am I a little underwhelmed by the disc?  Yeah.  Does that mean I won't be all over the dance floor at his Cedar show November 1?  Hell, no.