Omar Souleyman

Omar Souleyman is a musician from Ra's al-'Ayn, Syria, in the northeastern region of Syria. Souleyman performs traditional Middle Eastern songs in Kurdish and Arabic.   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 *****'* 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 fear 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.