Saturday, June 28th 2014 // 01:30 // Palazzo Candiotti
Live

Omar Souleyman - the Syrian artist who brought the Shaabi street sound to the West through his notorious late night festival slots (Sonar in Barcelona, ATP in Minehead, UK) – has finally recorded an album. After three compilations and a live release, Wenu Wenu is his first album to be recorded in a studio and was produced by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet).
Born in 1966, Souleyman grew up in Ra’s al’-Ayn, a Syrian town in the northeastern region of Jazeera. That’s where he first heard Syrian folk music played on a long-necked lute called a bozouki and rebab, a single-stringed fiddle. He enlisted Rizan Sa’id from a local Kurdish combo in 1996. The pair electrified Souleyman’s acoustic music – playing it harder, faster, louder. He became an increasingly prominent act on the local wedding circuit, eventually generating numerous bootleg recordings and YouTube videos.
Souleyman's international audience is expanding, thanks to projects such as his well-received remixes for Björk’s Biophilia, and he’s seen his influence spread around the Middle East.
Often described as “Syrian Techno” and recorded primarily live in the studio, Wenu Wenu distills Omar and Rizan’s enthralling live performances into a fireball of Middle Eastern passion and excitement.