Rizan Said | Boiler Room Berlin: Sawt Syria

In collaboration with Sadaa Sound Syndicate, we're honoured to present Sawt Syria: an exploration of club & underground music culture in Syria and its exilic diaspora in Europe. Captured in the summer of 2022, this two-part project showcases, for the first time ever, the most compelling Syrian DJs & producers of contemporary culture, shaabi sounds & rap.

The second segment – 'Exile (Europe)', shot between Amsterdam & Berlin – presents a 7-hour broadcast with 14 artists, followed by a video-essay in which they reflect on their changing artistic practices as they navigate their diasporic realities & make sense out of their experience away from home.

"Sawt Syria {'sawt' meaning sound} is a meditation on the Syrian condition forged in over a decade of still ongoing war and dispersion, of the abjection and joy that shape that condition and the place of music in reckoning and striving for life. It was conceived & produced by Syrians for Syrians with editorial help from Sadaa Sound Syndicate – a cross-border group of self-organized Syrians who are attuned to the agential possibilities of sound. Since its inception, this project has been difficult to put out into a world where genocide is ongoing in Palestine and where turmoil persists in Syria and the region. Our work today and everyday is geared towards a Syria that is ours and a Free Palestine." – Sadaa Sound Syndicate