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Wenu Wenu by Omar Souleyman reviewed by rollingstone — 7.0/10 | Wavelength | Wavelength

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rollingstone

Wenu Wenu

Item: Wenu Wenu
Rating: 7
Author: rollingstone

Omar Souleyman (2013)

7.0/ 10

Wedding-singer-cum-Björk remixer Omar Souleyman is known for urban Syrian dabke dance music. But his hookahbar synths, guitar-hero electric saz runs and blazing digitized hand percussion will probably translate to most Western ravers as EDM-grade belly-dance music. And why not? Singing in Arabic and Kurdish, he pitches R&B woo, invoking camelhair scarves ("Yagbuni") and Damascus honeymoons (the Arab-world hit "Khattaba") with ferocious vocal fricatives, while producer Kieran Hebdan (Four Tet) sharpens the attacks and decays without diluting the style. Occasional Allah invocations notwithstanding, this is party music, to be sure – it's a hot, fresh and, given our domestic Arab-phobia, radical sound.

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Other reviews of Wenu Wenu

metacritic

7.9

pitchfork

Syrian singer Omar Souleyman’s Wenu Wenu is technically his first proper recording, having been cut in a studio in Brooklyn rather than on site at one of the thousands of weddings he’s performed over the past two decades. Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, who produced, made the wise decision not to try and improve on a sound that doesn’t need fixing.

7.2