Playlist: The Music of Syrian Exile

Check out this playlist I put together for The New Humanitarian featuring Syrian musicians I interviewed during fieldwork in Turkey.

Excerpt from The New Humanitarian

Over the past few years, Habash, who is Syrian American and a trained pianist, has been following a group of Syrian musicians who fled the war and settled in Turkey. She is exploring how they have struggled, adapted, and sometimes flourished while continuing to create in a new country, albeit one with longstanding ties to Syria. 

Making music after fleeing a war, and while the conflict continues, can be an important coping mechanism, Habash told a London audience at a February panel discussion organised by The New Humanitarian and the School of Oriental and African Studies. As Istanbul-based Syrian musician Nour Yamm told her: “It’s the only thing that keeps me sane after everything we witnessed in Syria.”

At least 13 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes since 2011, 6.6 million becoming refugees (although that is not, Habash says, a term that all the musicians she studies have embraced). Making art in this sort of exile often reflects trauma. But as the music Habash shares below demonstrates, art also can celebrate a country and a people that are too often only depicted against death and destruction.