31 f Dune Surfing
Twangy guitar meets Middle Eastern strings in the hands of Syriana, resulting in a great album and live shows. But many a thing can go wrong on the road to Damascus, as Jamie Renton discovers.
O
n the face of it, Syriana create a strange musical brew, a com- bination of Middle Eastern instrumental virtuosity and Cold War imagery, swelling
Oriental strings and twangy ’60s guitar. And yet somehow all the pieces fit together, or at least they did… and now different pieces are fitting together in dif- ferent ways. Allow me to explain…
The Syriana project was originally a collaboration between Nick ‘Count Dubu- lah’ Page (ex-Transglobal Underground/ Temple Of Sound), London-based Syrian qanun (zither) player Abdullah Chhadeh, and Bernard O’Neill, bassist and arranger on all kinds of projects, including many years working with Chhadeh. Some time between the recording of their debut album The Road To Damascus and its release on Real World in Autumn 2010, Chhadeh left the project and a trio of musi- cians, Palestinian/Jordanian oud player/ singer Nizar Al Issa; Algerian violinist Mounir ‘Moon’ Baziz and Pales- tinian percussionist Iba Abu Khalaf, were drafted in as replacements. More on this later.
The origins of Syriana were in a moot- ed qanun and electric guitar/ East meets West project, discussed by Dubulah and Chhadeh back in 2007. They’d met through their involvement with Natacha Atlas’s band. O’Neill was recruited soon after and the trio got down to some seri- ous writing and arranging. “Then, late one night we were discussing how the project could get more interesting,” recalls Dubu- lah, when we meet for a pizza the day after Syriana’s album launch gig at Isling- ton Assembly Hall. “Abdullah said he could go to Syria to record strings and I thought that would be fantastic, because it would make the album different as nobody’s recorded a Syrian string section. Then Bernard suggested that we all go.”
So the trio set off for Damascus, with
engineer Toby Mills and film-maker Nico Piazza in tow (Piazza’s visuals are back- projected throughout Syriana’s live show). Abdullah’s brother was kind enough to put them up and although the trip was self-funded, they got the money back from Real World retrospectively.
“We had to take a risk to prove a point,” notes Nick. “Initially it was all done on people’s credit cards, mainly Bernard’s and Toby’s. We went in spring and it was cold and damp, but very beautiful, a bit like Greece but with more of a desert feel.”
Abdullah put the word out that they were looking for a string section and through this they were introduced to the seven-piece Friends String Group, a demo- cratic ensemble made up of Syrians, an Iraqi and a Kurd. In honour of their inclu- sive, multicultural line-up, the Syriana crew renamed them The Pan Arab Strings Of Damascus for the recordings, with Abdullah and Bernard providing string arrangements. They’d love to be able to bring the string players over to perform live, but it’s not that simple. “It’s very diffi- cult for them to go anywhere but Lebanon,” explains Nick. “From what I saw, Syrians have a good quality of life, but freedom to travel is not so widespread, mainly because of visa prob- lems, internal and external.”
Nick’s always on the lookout for an opportunity to record with musicians on their own turf, travelling to Mexico to co- produce Los De Abajo and Addis Ababa for his excellent Dub Colossus project. “The way that people play on their home soil is really different. When they come abroad, they’re in an ambassadorial role, whereas when they’re at home, they just do what they do.” Travel, he’s discovered, really does broaden
Photo: Judith Burrows
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