Omar Souleyman Live @ Pumpehuset, CPH
Once again, Omar Souleyman managed to deliver us an incredible concert that we will not forget so quickly.
Copenhagen’s Pumpehuset, that reminds us of some underground Berlin-based nightclubs, was packed until the edge - and not stop to rise. Is something to remark the great soundsystem of the club and the price of the drinks, so cheap for this city!
After a decent Hip Hop warm-up by Dj Klaus Boss, the crowd was more than ready for this Syrian electronic dabke artists to start its show. Omar Souleyman was (only) supported by the very handy musician Rizan Sa’id on the double-stage Korg keyboard who delivered both the piercing beats as well as the hypnotising lead melodies. While he was playing the tunes, he was actually using a sort of microtonal pitch to distort the sounds and create a truly oriental-inspired feeling.
At the beginning of the show, Sa'id played a deep oriental melody that made the crowd plea for Omar’s entry, and when he finally entered the stage nothing could ever stop the energy and craziness from flowing.
The only thing we remember from this intensive one hour show is that the people were dancing as if there was no tomorrow – some guys were even dressed up in Arabic traditional clothes and dancing traditional dabke dance that Syrian people usually dance on the traditional wedding parties. Omar delivered, with his nearly serious and overlooking manner, songs of his first album produced in the West, "Wenu Wenu" (he already has more than 500 homemade albums recorded at weddings), like for example the great Warni Warni, Ya Yumma or Khattaba, but also presented some songs of his new 2015 album "Bahdemi Nami" under the Berlin-based label Monkeytownand produced by the musical diamants Gilles Peterson, Modeselektor and Four Tet.
Despite being a rather rare musician with his traditionally influenced music that is not representative of the actual musical landscape of the Middle East, he was and still is - also with his new album - able to receive the respect of the Western public and big names of the musical production.
The evening was a blizzard of this wild, oriental fast-beat dance music that many around the globe have started to love and accept under the genre of western electronic music.
After this (way too short) one-hour voyage to a place of deliberate dancing and mind-blowing four-to-the-floor beats, we were beamed back to Copenhagen and hope that Omar will soon come back to take us away, again.
