Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Assasi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Assasi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
So far all of the projects I have worked on are so meaningful to me because it talks about my journey as a young Syrian who left home and I have found that a lot of the Syrian youth connect to it, but my most recent project “Hakawati” which translates in Arabic to storyteller, is the most meaningful so far transcending and fusing genres between Arabic hip-hop and Middle Eastern music “Sharqi” and “Qudud Halabiya” with the Syrian traditional Hakawati style i’ve created a sort of Neo-Hakawati experience that goes beyond just a traditional story teller. While on stage I bring the audience on a journey with me by telling stories through my music while elaborating in between to give a much broader picture to the audience about the concept and the inspiration behind each song, some times the story is performed in Arabic or English it’s up to the audience.
Assasi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Thank you for having me. On stage you will see me wear a red tarboush (fez) and carefully arrange a scarf on my left shoulder before each performance. My music finds me trapped between the past – a golden era of Arab music and culture – and the utopian future – a society free of today’s hang-ups and conflicts, in which individuals and their unique gifts flourish in safety. Through each performance, I try to channel the essence of Hakawati, the storytellers of Syria. Mixing together the traditional instruments of the middle east with modern hip hop beats, my goal is to take the audience on a journey of my life weaving together elements of love, betrayal, loss, & happiness.
Emerging from Aleppo, Syria’s most ancient city and cultural capital, I traded my school uniform and basketball shoes for an unwavering commitment to hip hop. Twenty years later I graduated from the School of Adversity with degrees in disappointments, tragedy, and exile. When my mentor and Bilad El-Sham movement co-creator Big K was killed, I used the grief to fuel my first successful release, “Clinic of Bilad El-Sham”. The seven tracks featured classic Oriental samples, lyrics exploring social issues, and vocals by Rai singer Cheb Wahid. The delayed release party featured a live band and kicked off experiments fusing hip hop with various instrumental accompaniments.
Like so many young Syrian creatives during the civil war, I landed in Beirut for a few years before hardening borders drove me to India, Nepal, Malaysia, and finally the United States. Hip hop remained my anchor through it all. My upcoming project, “Third World Wide,” reflects my global journey as well as the friends, influences, and lessons I picked up along the way.
I am now based in Maine, USA. My music remains a fusion of the Arabic-language rap with a rich tapestry of modern and traditional sounds from the Arab world and the diverse cultures I have encountered since leaving Syria in 2012. While I remain unable to safely return to Syria, I am leveraging hip-hop’s collaborative storytelling using the tradition of Hakawati style to connect with my home culture and build solidarity in my adopted communities.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I left school in the 7th grade to play basketball and try to make it on a professional level, from there I left basketball for hip-hop music, & since then I taught myself to speak English and started performing professionally at the age of 16. My first show was the historical school of “Sayf al-Dawla” in the old city of Aleppo. It was from that performance I knew I just wanted to make music but it was so difficult to start a scene with a new music genre that most Syrians are not familiar with. Furthermore, because there were only a few of us that were into hip hop music that made it even more difficult to build a scene in Syria so people back home usually stuck to making traditional music. After two failed attempts to get a hip hop album off the ground I decided in the early years of my career to make a pivot and fuse the traditional music with hip-hop but I couldn’t find any Middle Eastern musicians to take me seriously. However, I still didn’t give up and kept the idea in the back of my head & in 2008 my friend Khaled Arnaout AKA Big.K and I created a movement called Bilad El-Sham. We performed a few times as solo artists together on stage under the movement. Tragically in 2010 Khaled was killed in Lebanon after an Akon concert under mysterious circumstances and the case was closed by the Lebanese government. I was extremely devastated and didn’t make music for a while. I remember on the third day of the funeral Khaled’s dad gifted me his first childhood keyboard which I still have with me and has since traveled the world with me since I left Syria. In addition, he gave me his professional microphone and told me to do something good with them. I decided to take the microphone and traded it to record my first fusion album under the name of Bilad El-Sham as a tribute to Big.K and to carry on his legacy. I called it “Clinic of Bilad El-Sham” & we sampled traditional songs. In exchange for the microphone the owner of the recording studio allowed me studio time to record my album but the deal was it needed to be completed in one day. Not only was it difficult to get musicians on the projects, because at the time this was happening it was 2011 about the time of the civil war, but now we needed to record all seven tracks on the album in one day. From the completion of that album, we went and were casted for Arabs Got Talent in Beirut, Lebanon. At the time I was homeless & sleeping on sidewalks. While this was happening I used to go to one corner in Hamra Street. I used to meet with musicians after this shop called “Domtex” closes we would gather there and jam. I told them about my fusion Idea and the masters of the album that I didn’t release yet and they liked it. So we took it to the stage and we almost sold out the first venue at Ta Marbouta and from there I did eight shows with Bilad El-Sham movement and a few TV appearances. I started helping young Syrian artists as well through the Bilad El-Sham movement & I feel in that way I honored Khaled and his legacy because he was a brother and mentor to me.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I lived most of my life growing up not understanding my feelings and my emotions and I had trouble expressing myself because I had a tough childhood and a difficult relationship with my father. As a result of significant physical and mental trauma I have been diagnosed with C-PTSD and now I’m getting diagnosed for ADHD. I’ve been struggling a lot with my mental health and still am, but back home in Syria we had no awareness of mental health. Unfortunately, in Syria there is a lot of stigma towards those who seek any sort of mental health treatment and if you want to see a therapist that means you are “crazy”. For me writing songs and performing became an outlet for me that helped me a lot to express myself when I didn’t have proper mental health treatments available. At times it felt like I had an alter ego that gets all the negative energy in me and turns it into a positive and let it out to the world & throughout the years this practice of using my music to release negative energy and emotions it has helped me to balance my mental health somehow until I was able to reach for professional help. Now I know a lot of the Arab youth specifically Syrians who left home like me and don’t have enough awareness about mental health like I did before & when they listen to my music they can relate to it and they can get some awareness about mental health though my songs and this specifically is one of the most rewarding things for me as an artist. When a young Syrian fans listen to my music and sends me messages like “your music means a lot to me and I relate to what you say” or “your music helped me to pull through tough times in my life” or “your music is like a therapy session to me” those are more precious and valuable than any views, streams, numbers or fame.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.AssasiMusic.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/assasimusic
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/assasimusic
- Twitter: http://www.twiter.com/assasimusic
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/assasimusic
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1TuHc6zFa31PJpMpvyKZoz
Image Credits
for the solo photos please credit the photographer (The Black Owl Studio) and fo the performance pictures with Bilad El-Sham ensemble please credit the photographer (Ned Warner Photography)