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Wael Alkak was born in 1982 in Jaramanah, a southern suburb of Damascus. In 2012, he moved to Paris and published his first album “Neshama – Songs belonging to the Syrian Revolution”. Five years later, we met with him to talk about “sha‘bī” music, his band “Neshama” and their new album “Min Zamān” (“Long ago”).

Alsharq: Wael, you studied at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, how did you get involved in making Syrian folk music – “sha‘bī” music - as it’s called in Arabic?

Wael Alkak: Although I have an academic background – I used to play concertos and sonatas as percussionist with the National Syrian Symphony Orchestra – I’ve always been in love with popular music. Back in Damascus, I was always searching for recordings of “sha‘bī” musicians but they were hard to find. Abu Riah, for example, was forbidden, or at least people thought he was forbidden. He has this song in which he says that Damascus is going to be like paradise once we have better living conditions. He was arrested and then started to sing only soft stuff, Islamic lyrics, like Sufism in the Western meaning.

You were arrested yourself by Syrian Security forces at the Lebanese borders after travelling to Beirut from Damascus where you had participated in the first protests in 2011. I remember how back then you described to me your experience of this time. You said that as a musician, you initially did not know what your role in the revolution was, but when you heard the chants of protesters in the streets, you realised what you could contribute…

Yes, when the first peaceful demonstrations happened in March 2011, I was excited. And surprised! But I have to say that I went to the protests as Wael – as a musician, not a political activist. And when I saw how popular folk musicians composed new songs and sung together with activist, how revolutionary slogans were combined with well-known folk melodies, I started to collect some of the most popular tunes of this time…

...which eventually led to the release of your first album “Neshama – Songs Belonging to the Syrian Revolution”. After your release from prison, you did not return to Syria and basically produced and recorded this album from exile, how did that work?

I relied on technology. I could not access Homs, Deraa or Hama at that time, because it would have been too dangerous. I had to ask someone who was there to record for me on a mobile phone and send it to me, which meant that the sounds were often really bad quality. But I was happy with that, I wanted to stay truthful to my sources, and have the sound of the demonstrations as they were. Then, when I planned to go to Jordan to record Syrian musicians who had left the country like Ahmed al-Qaseem, I was not allowed to enter the country, I had to go back to Istanbul and direct recording processes over skype.

The title of the album - “Neshama” – is now also the name of your band. The word is described in the Lisān al-ʿArab6 as expressing the “essential characteristics” of people who live in the desert: resilience, steadfastness and courage. What does that name mean to you?

Neshama is an expression for people who give just to give. In the entire region, the word has a very good meaning. It has roots in Hebrew, where it means something like “good spirit”. It’s about being good. In 2011, people were not in the streets for political profits. They were there to protest, for us, for a civil state. Everybody was like this in Syria in 2011 – even the regime is saying this now! I was affected by this. This is what we supported and that's where we were. And we are still there. The media just does not show that.

By “we” you mean the opposition?

No, not really. You have a lot of bad parts within the opposition, extremists like the regime, they don't want to hear what others are saying. By "we", I mean people who ask for a change. For a peaceful change. For a better life. Like most Syrians. We don't have a strong voice. This is what made me work on keeping Neshama alive for the past five years.

What exactly have you been working on during that time?

Once the album was released, I sent it to different festivals across Europe. In November 2013, we got invited to give our first concert in a cultural centre in Malmo in Sweden, called "Kontrapunkt". This was when Neshama turned from being an album to being a band. We managed to bring three people that I had recorded with to Sweden: My brother Yazan Alkak, Shadi Abazid who plays the Rababa and Abu Zeyah on the Mijwiz. Yazan and Shadi stayed in Sweden afterwards but Abu Zeyah went back to Jordan. His wife was expecting a baby and he couldn't handle to be away. This was at a time when people were swimming to come to Sweden! That affected me a lot. It pushed me to keep working.

Working towards Neshama’s new album “Min Zamān”?

Yes. As I said, I wanted Neshama to stay alive. I thought this music is really going to be something. It could be listened to and danced to anywhere. I felt that anybody could feel the meaning of this music, and its temperature - because music is not just sound and harmony, music is also temperature, especially music that comes from the heart. But I was damaged. I was stamped with a political message, I was "the guy who is with the peaceful revolution". Fine, I am. Still. But at the end, I am a musician. The songs of our first album will always remind people of the time of a peaceful, social movement. Like “Yā maḥlāhā al-ḥurrīyya” (How sweet freedom) which was chanted at protests, or “ʿAynī ʿalayhā”, (“My eyes upon her”) sung by Ahmed al-Qaseem. People know that he sings these words to his hometown Deraa, which was the symbol of peaceful protests and resistance - and they also know why he sings these words - because he had to leave. This time, with “Min Zamān” I wanted to just focus on being a musician.

And was that easy?

No. The news of Syria became more and more devastating. I was so sad. I decided to turn off the TV, the internet, social media, everything. I stayed in the studio, with the more than fifty songs that I collected since 2011. And when I got accepted for an artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, my head became full of colours again. I met musicians from Africa, the U.S., the U.K., Sweden, Germany, electronic musicians. I started to perform Neshama in an experimental way, I began to be more comfortable in France. And I started to get the electricity of Paris, the lights, the metro, I started to feel my pulse again. Now, I wasn’t in West-Europe where everything is so organised. I started to get my memory back. Of weddings, of my neighbourhood Jaramanah. Melodies started to enter my head…

Like that of the first song of the new album, “Dahrij ya Hamam”? Exactly.

That one is a very popular song played during weddings in Damascus suburbs. It means “Move, Pigeon” or “Dance, pigeon”. People love to dance to it! I recorded the back vocals for this song in Paris with people who would not like to have their names told. You know why? Because my name is associated with the opposition, with the revolution. Until now, people are sometimes afraid to have their names published when they work with me. I have at least five artists like this. Imagine: After all this, they are still afraid. And they are in Europe!

You indirectly refer to that fear in the song “al-Nās” - "The people”, which is one of your own compositions on the new album. Can you tell me a bit more about this song?

In Syria, people refer to “al-nās” when they are paranoid. I met many people with mental problems during my 28 years in Syria, including one of my relatives who passed away a long time ago. He always used to say “al-nās, al-nās”, he always had a problem with “the people”. Because nobody wanted to hear him or listen to what he had to say - because nobody understood him. But the song itself talks about something a bit different. It starts with the words “The people have left and decided that each one has his hand for himself7”. It basically means that now people only care about themselves. Although they can hear, they do not like to listen anymore. It goes on: gharam al -ghāyyeb ‘azrū ma‘ū, majnūn ḥubbek rijja‘ū? The expression “al -ghāyyeb ‘azrū ma‘ū” – “The one who is absent has an excuse” is a popular saying in Arabic. When you are absent, nobody knows what you are doing, you must have a reason, so it's fine. “Despite this”, the song asks, “am I crazy to get your love back?” Then I give this question to the music. I feel like burning something, because it is so cold inside.

What do you mean, “it’s so cold”?

The feeling of not being engaged anymore. I have not once participated in a demonstration outside of Syria. Now everybody is just alone. I don't want to whine about this, but that’s the way it is. That in Syria, everyone pro-regime was brainwashed, I knew. But I never thought that people would be like that here, that they’d really believe in TVs, that they’d accept these political regimes in the world. I mean, look at the president of Russia or the president of the United States…I feel shy about this, it's 2017. In the 1960s, people had more values, they pushed for peace not for war. But now, after sixty years, everyone has to show again how strong they are. I did not accept this in Syria, I said out loud that I do not accept it and I had to leave the country. But in Europe, you feel like you are a drop in the ocean. Fox News is not interested in your story, Daesh (ISIS) is more interesting for them. There are only a few people who are active, I feel the rest goes to work from nine until six in the evening and that's it. That's what I mean by brainwashed, people are like machines.

That things were different at some point in time, is that the theme of the second one of your own compositions “Min Zamān” (“Long ago”)? It says there “Long ago, with love we came, we took you by surprise. And if we came to see you and say hi, please don't throw water on us. Despite all the sadness, there is no more beautiful life than life in Shām - long ago.”8

In Syria, if you have a dream and you see somebody throwing water on you, it's a bad sign. What I want to express in these lyrics is that if we were come and be like, ‘let's do something together in this country, or in this world’, please don't keep us away from you, keep us close to your hearts. Even if the situation is sad, and everybody is sad, remember that a long time ago, life was beautiful in sham – and by “Shām” I mean “billād al-shām”, the entire region. We sing the song in a 4/4 beat, but when we arrive at the phrase “min zamān” - “a long time ago”, we add another beat, we break the melody, and then go back to the normal rhythm of the song. The break in the melody expresses the break in time. I have a story about this song that I’d like to tell you. In 2014, I came up with the melody of the song and sent it to my brother Yazan in Malmoe. I told him ‘look, I feel like I heard this melody before. But I don't know where, can you help me find out?’ He searched for several months but never came across anything like it. Then, two years later, he was playing the song on the oud and there was this old woman from Homs, and she started to sing! She remembered only a couple of words but she said that parts of that melody belong to an old song. That's how it works you know? Composers don't create, they discover.

You call your music “sha‘bī”, a term whose subject – “al-sha‘b” (“the people”) – has been, as Professor Samia Mehrez noted with regard to Egypt, “emptied of its signification through decades of abuse by the regime9”. How would you translate that term, and what does it mean for your music?

I don't know how I would translate it. Nor the music. It's big. Sha‘bī is always wild, it is music played on weddings, it is danced to. It can be acoustic or 100% digital. One important aspect is that it’s local. Why was I engaged to the songs in the first album? Because I was there and I heard it with my own ear in the street. Now I am in Paris, I go to gigs of my friends who do house, techno or acid-style music. “Sha‘bī” is about the locals. Whatever nationality or culture they belong to. I myself feel from Billad ash-sham, the Levante. This region is so connected, also the music. It is wrong to say: “this is a Syrian song” or “this is a Palestinian song” or this song has Arab roots or this one has Jewish roots, it is mixed and it is colourful and it is amazing. Today, any music that cannot be categorized is usually named 'world music'. But with a new generation of musicians, like us or 47 soul in London, or Khebez Dawle in Berlin, I think sha‘bī music could really become a genre.

About a week ago, you and your brother performed Neshama’s new album at the London Shubbak Festival, this time with different musicians. How come?

When we got invited to play at Shubbak festival, I told the team that we have a complicated situation, that we have musicians who are in Jordan. They tried their best to get visas for them, but at the end, it didn’t work out, so we played instead with the guest musicians Jammal Al Sakka (percussion), Louai Alhenawi (nai) and Fajer Alabdalla (bass) who are all based in London. Jammal was my professor at the Higher Institute. Playing with them, I felt like I went back to my family and we decided that we will be the Neshama band in Europe now that it is so difficult for the others to travel. But even if they are not on stage with us, they are part of the music because my live set has samples of them. This is our story now. The Syrian story. Like recording an album over skype, it’s strange. But it shows the truth. Maybe in a few years we'll be on stage, all of us. For now, I am just happy that I have people who support me. And I recognised this with Syrian artists in general. Since 2011, we have more trust in each other. If you ask me what has changed for the better within the past five years, it’s that. We always had this problem, we were not together in the right way. But now, at each gig I feel supported by everybody. That's what keeps me going.

One last question - why do both of Neshama’s albums feature exactly seven songs?

I always end up with this number. It’s a symbol of victory. When you hold two fingers up to do the victory sign, you get the Arabic sign for the number seven.

Thanks a lot for the conversation!

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