After Omar Souleyman’s incredible performances at the One Love Music Festival and Babylon’s former venue in Asmalımescit, his fans – me included – were looking forward to his next performance in Istanbul. Last Saturday, I was a part of Omar Souleyman’s crazy Syrian wedding-dance party at Babylon Bomonti, and I have to say that I loved it!
Omar Souleyman has a career story as interesting as his style: he began working as a part-time wedding singer in northeastern Syria, but soon his original beats and sounds garnered international attention, and he was invited to music festivals in Beirut and European cities. I first heard about him from a friend in Paris who was talking about how everyone was trying to catch him somewhere in Europe during the summer. I didn’t get his appeal until she showed me a video of his performance at the Glastonbury Festival. No doubt, his musical style is different than what we enjoy most of the time and obviously requires some specialized dance moves. But still, his sound is familiar to me in a strange way; maybe the reason is that he is just a musician from the other side of the border who tries to keep his community’s culture alive.
Omar Souleyman sings in Arabic in his own local dialectic but – as he told us on Saturday – his music is also influenced by Kurdish, Iraqi and Ashuri rhythms. He showed up on Saturday in his traditional get-up and the dark black sunglasses that he never takes off. It was a very crowded Saturday night at Babylon Bomonti, so it took quite an effort to reach the bartender and get our drinks. There was an obvious circulation between the stage and the bar: you dance and jump non-stop, then get thirsty and go to the bar to have a drink. I have been to many events at Babylon, yet I have never seen more than half of the audience dancing at the same time.
Over the course of the evening we heard songs from his first album, Wenu Wenu, and his most recent release, Bahdeni Nami. A nice surprise for me – and the other Turks in attendance – was that one of his songs included an acoustic portion of Kenan Dogulu’s “Cakkıdı Cakkıdı”. Judging by the people we met, I can clearly say that there were many foreigners, especially Europeans students, in attendance – Omar Souleyman is definitely an international star!
