Omar Souleyman

Omar Souleyman is a musician from the village of Tell Tamer near the city of Ra's al-'Ayn in the northeastern region of Syria. He started his career as a part-time wedding singer in his native al-Hasakah Governorate, and while himself a Sunni Arab, he emphasises the influence its culturally diverse milieu has had on his style: "My music is from the community I come from – the Kurdish, the Ashuris, the Arabic, they're all in this community. Even Turkish because it's so near, it's just across the border. And even Iraqi."

Born in 1966, he began his career in 1994, working with a number of musicians with whom he still performs, and around five hundred studio and live albums have been released under his name. (Eighty percent of those releases are recordings made at weddings and presented to the married couple, which are later copied and sold at local kiosks.)

In October 2013 a newly recorded album Wenu Wenu was released by UK label Ribbon Music.

He appeared at the Glastonbury Festival in 2011, and performed during Chaos in Tejas in Austin, Texas in June 2011. In August 2011, Omar Souleyman appeared at Paredes de Coura in Portugal. Souleyman was chosen by Caribou to perform at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival that they co-curated in December 2011 in Minehead, England.

In 2011 he recorded three remixes for Björk's Biophilia, all found on the second disc of her "Crystalline Series".

In August 2013 he had a performance at the Way Out West festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. For a while he had been denied permission to visit Sweden. The authorities had feared that he would eventually request asylum. Two days before the date of stage the visa was granted. In December 2013, he performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway.

In June 2014 he performed at The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. In July he performed at Roskilde Festival, Denmark and at the Mostly Jazz, Funk and Soul Festival, Birmingham, UK. He then performed at One Love Festival in Istanbul on 16 June 2014. In August 2014 he performed at Pukkelpop Festival in Kiewit, Hasselt in Belgium. Later that summer on 31 August he played the Electric Picnic festival in Ireland. He also played at Treefort Music Festival in Boise, ID in March 2015.

• 2006: Highway to Hassake (compilation) (Sublime Frequencies)
• 2009: Dabke 2020 (compilation) (Sublime Frequencies)
• 2010: Jazeera Nights (compilation) (Sublime Frequencies)
• 2011: Haflat Gharbia - The Western Concerts (2LP (compilation)) (Sublime Frequencies)
• 2011: Leh Jani (2LP, full-length Syrian tape reissue) (Sham Palace)
• 2013: Wenu Wenu (Ribbon Music)
• 2015: Bahdeni Nami (Monkeytown)
• 2017: To Syria With Love (Mad Decent)