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44 albums · 1944–2026

Music of Syria, from the qudud of Aleppo and Sabah Fakhri to George Wassouf, Omar Souleyman and today

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

Omar Souleyman in a white thobe and keffiyeh singing on a stage lit by yellow beams, his keyboard player behind him
Waed Bouhassoun singing with her oud beside the flamenco guitarist Carlos Piñana on a dark stageAn instrument maker's shop in old Damascus with ouds and a buzuq hanging in its doorway
Omar Souleyman at the Way Out West festival in Gothenburg in 2013. Photo: Kim Metso, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Waed Bouhassoun with her oud and Carlos Piñana at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris in 2010. Photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Ouds in the doorway of an instrument shop in old Damascus. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Syria's popular music has a city at its heart, Aleppo, whose muwashshah and qudud Sabah Fakhri sang for half a century after Bakri al-Kurdi and Mohammad Khairy, and Sabri Moudallal, Adib Dayikh, Hassan Haffar and Hamza Shakkur with the Al-Kindi ensemble kept beside him, and from there Asmahan and Farid al-Atrash in Cairo, Fahd Ballan, Mayada El Hennawy, Samih Choukeir's songs, Abed Azrié's settings of the poets, George Wassouf, Assala and Nour Mhanna, Omar Souleyman's dabke from Hasakah, Lena Chamamyan, Rasha Rizk and Faia Younan, Kinan Azmeh's clarinet with Hewar and the Syrian National Symphony, Kulna Sawa, Tanjaret Daghet and Khebez Dawle from the clubs of Damascus, Hello Psychaleppo's electronics, Bu Kolthoum's rap and Waed Bouhassoun's oud. The list has 44 records from 1944 to 2026, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; the Kurdish and Armenian song of Syria beyond a nod, the church and Sufi repertoires, the 78s of the old Aleppo and Damascus singers that never reached streaming, and Safwan Bahlawan, Gene and Shadi Ali, whose records are not on Deezer, would each need a list of their own. About 38 hours of music, 4 days of a few records each.

By genre

Classical 9%Pop 9%World 8%Other 74%
  • Classical 9%
  • Pop 9%
  • World 8%
  • Other 74%

The genres named most: syrian, pop, classical arabic, tarab, folk, muwashshah.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Syria 44. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1940s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.