Of all the lesser-known musical genres to have crossed over to, or at least towards, the mainstream in recent years, dabke has to be one of the most unlikely. Primarily performed at Arabic weddings, it’s the soundtrack to joyous circle or line dancing, and whilst its best-known performers are regional stars, it remained very much a regional niche interest until 2006, when US indie label Sublime Frequencies released Highway to Hassake, a compilation of early work by dabke artist Omar Souleyman.
Souleyman, a seasoned wedding performer, had previously released an astonishing 500 albums (the Syrian wedding circuit is apparently a hotbed of DIY & bootleg recordings), and thanks to Sublime Frequencies’ enthusiasm for his work he is now Syria’s most famous musical export, working with the likes of Bjork and Four Tet, and now signed to Diplo’s Mad Decent label.
Inevitably, Souleyman’s recent recordings have seen many of the rough edges shaved off his sound – compare his latest work with the truly incredible chaos and adrenaline rush of ‘Hafer Gabrak Bidi’ (off 2010’s essential Jazeera Nights compilation) for example – and yet, to Souleyman newbies in particular, his music remains almost indescribably exhilarating. To Syria, With Love, a love letter to his troubled homeland from exile in Turkey, may have a contemporary techno polish, but it still features all the familiar Souleyman motifs: the clattering electronic rhythms, frantic ululating keyboards that simply defy the laws of physics, and Omar himself, shades permanently welded to his head, ciggy permanently welded to his lips, passionately voicing lyrics that, even when your Arabic begins and ends at hello and thank you as mine does, still succeed in touching the heart.
When they all come together, as they do on second track ‘Ya Bnayya’, it’s utterly thrilling. Even when they don’t, and when Souleyman’s sound is, let’s not sugarcoat this, westernised and watered down, To Syria, With Love is still heady, heady stuff. ‘Ya Boul Habari’ may have a more widescreen, cinematic arrangement than usual, and even features naff EDM rushes and whoops, but, along with ‘Khayen’, it still makes me want to jump around like a gibbon on crack. ‘Es Samra’ may have an intro that recalls the horror of Madonna’s ‘La Isla Bonita’ (I don’t buy into all this moral panic about ‘cultural appropriation’, but if I did, ‘La Isla Bonita’ would surely be exhibit A for the prosecution), but once the intro is done it’s a throbbing dancefloor monster. ‘Aenta Lhabeeytak’ does the Macarena and just about gets away with it.
But the standout moment here is the stunning ‘Mawal’, on which Souleyman moves away from the dancefloor and instead delivers a stunning, string-laden lament to – one assumes – the homeland from which he currently lives in exile, and shows that there is more to him than soundtracking wedding revelry. You don’t need to understand Arabic to feel his pain, just as you don’t need to understand Arabic to dance around like a lunatic to the rest of this wonderful record.
