After the band De Lux, the dance party was certainly not over, since the piece of resistance on Thursday night at the Santa Monica Pier was Syrian musican Omar Souleyman. He delivered a sticky hot one, and almost brought the pier down as I could feel the wooden floor moving under my feet while people were joyously dancing, stomping and jumping, following the exotic beats and chanting ‘Omar, Omar, Omar!! The star – and he is a rock star now, no doubt about it – let the crowd wait for at least 2-3 minutes before he appeared on stage, he was building anticipation as Elvis may have done it, letting his voice resonate over the synthetized Arabic instruments and electronic beats, before stepping on stage under the large crowd’s cheer.
But is this that exotic? You could as well say that it is pure EDM! And that’s why I understand why Souleyman has been so successful lately, he is riding the EDM wave like an Arabic prince and his music totally works despite the language barrier, despite a static stage presence which could be summed up to him holding the mic, clapping his hands, moving his arms with ample gestures and sending kisses with his two palms at the end of a song. But Souleyman is not an opportunist, these trance-inducing rhythms and these infectious beats are part of his ancient Middle-eastern style, they just happen to be reworked with synth and drum machines and be the taste of the moment. All these kids had the time of their life, the pier was packed and as the songs had a tendency to never end, restarting from scratch each time the sound lowered, people were in a full dance mode and semi trance the whole time.
Souleyman himself was quite a sight, wearing a long white robe, his signature famous red and white kaffiyeh and dark sunglasses, he looked like a master of ceremony presiding a party without even a smile or a change in his visage expression, singing in Arabic and occasionally throwing a ‘thank you’, while we didn’t get much more from his unique musician Rizan Sa’id playing a two-level keyboard. Over a relentless beat and synthesized traditional sounds, Souleyman was moving his two arms toward the crowd in a welcoming gesture again and again, looking like the new prophet of EDM,… it sounded like a simple formula, it was overly repetitive, all the songs kind of sounded the same to my untrained ears, but it worked marvelously seeing how many people were losing it, getting crazy and intoxicated by the hypnotic music, although some weed smoking in the back must have helped a bit.
It’s still a strange phenomenon to witness Omar Souleyman triumph this way, why is such a traditional music, barely transformed, speak with such fervor to a Western (mostly white) audience who can’t understand a word of what he says?… and if you want more proof he has become a hipster darling, he has a show Sunday night at the Echoplex in Silver Lake and is in conversation with ex-Black Flag’s man Henry Rollins at the Grammy Museum the same day! Omar Souleyman, the Syrian techno sheikh, is a big rock star.
