Omar Souleyman

Omar Souleyman is an Arab musician from Ra's al-'Ayn, Syria, in the north eastern region of Syria. 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.) His music has reached a wider audience in recent years due to the American label Sublime Frequencies, from which he has been able to tour extensively and release three records. He appeared at the Glastonbury Festival in 2011, and performed during Chaos in Tejas in Austin, Texas in June 2011 . Souleyman has been chosen by Caribou to perform at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival that they will co-curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. In 2011 he recorded three re mixes for Bj├Ârk's Biophilia, all found on the second disc of her "Crystalline Series". He performs traditional Middle Eastern songs in Kurdish and Arabic. Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn confirmed that the band collaborated with Souleyman on a track that did not make their 2010 album Plastic Beach, Albarn said that the track will see a release one day, upon completion.