From their pocket-size portability to the myriad of mixes made and the always anticipated sleeve covers, cassette tapes are nostalgia-filled relics of a lost era. Cast a gaze over some of the tapes in the collection of Iraqi-American music producer Mark Gergis and the sentimentality feels even stronger.
He is preserving the sounds of a vanished era in Syrian history with his Syria Cassette Archives collection.
Whether it’s the woman in red, hand on hip, staring coyly at her would-be listeners, the popular singing duo smiling awkwardly through the plastic, or the omnipresence of thick black moustaches against backdrops of faded pinks and large printed numerals, the tapes are a passage to an irretrievable time and space in Syrian popular culture.
Beyond an uncountable death toll and widespread physical destruction, a decade-long brutal war in Syria has also made a graveyard of the country’s pre-war culture.
Many international efforts made over the years to salvage and protect Syria’s heritage have focused on artefacts and monuments. The more intangible arts, such as music, receive less attention.
Gergis, 51, began the Syrian Cassette Archives in 2018 after being "heartbroken" by the loss of traditions and cultures in the country. He had been a regular visitor to Syria since 1997 when he first went to research the sounds of the Assyrian community.
There is an urgency to map and preserve this small facet of contemporary musical heritage for both Syrians and the wider world
Mark Gergis
"I fell in love with Syria and would just always buy tapes whether from the street kiosks or the proper music shops," he tells The National. "As an outsider to the culture, I came into it blindly picking cassettes but also wanting a broad spectrum of representation from the region – it’s so diverse ethnically and in musical styles and cultures so I was trying to understand it."
Gergis’s ethno-musical work began in earnest in the early 2000s with a focus on folk-pop from the Middle East and South-East Asia, including regional choubi and dabke (folk and pop) music from Syria and Iraq, where his family are originally from.
Gergis amassed an impressive collection of tapes over the decades of travelling back and forth to Syria, including a few live performances of high-energy wedding dance songs by a then little-known singer called Omar Souleyman. Gergis would later seek out the singer and receive permission to release a compilation album, Highway to Hassake, on the US world-music indie label Sublime Frequencies in 2007. Souleyman went on to become a global sensation working with some of the biggest names in music, including Bjork and Four Tet.
A few years into the Syrian war, Gergis thought his collection might have garnered a "tragic added value" by providing a "window into a time that doesn’t exist".
“And that’s when it segued from a collection into an archive,” he says.
More than 450 audio tapes acquired by Gergis between 1997 and 2010 are included in the collection and reflect years of researching and personal connections with local music shops, producers, distributors and musicians around the country.
As many of Syria’s musicians and producers became displaced or fled the country, much of the long-standing music circuits and traditions were disrupted.
“There is an urgency to map and preserve this small facet of contemporary musical heritage for both Syrians and the wider world. The hope is that the Cassette Archives can help stem the cultural amnesia and loss that can arise from these disruptions, and help bridge the gap between Syria’s analogue musical landscapes at the turn of the century and what residues of it remain digitally or online,” Gergis, who lives in London with his wife, wrote about the project.
He has also included oral history testimonies and interviews with people who "made that era happen musically" and who demonstrate Syria’s broad and eclectic pre-war listening landscape and music networks.
“It will also allow people to see what has happened with music over this time, to talk about demographic shifts, the triumphs of that era and how the cassette democratised music," Gergis says.
Broad in scope, his collection archives a range of musical styles enjoyed across the different ethnic communities living in Syria, including Syrian Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Armenians and Iraqis, who were displaced by US and UK-led sanctions and war in Iraq.
Among the many tapes are recordings of live concerts, studio albums, soloists, classical, religious, patriotic and children’s music, with a special focus on the regional dabke and shaabi folk-pop styles popular at weddings, parties and social gatherings.
An additional 200 cassettes have been added by donors and collaborators within and outside of Syria since the project began.
"I hope the collection soars beyond just mine," says Gergis, who wants the site to become a centralised space for sharing tapes as well as stories about the music and the people who made, sold, distributed and listened in Syria.
A listening session featuring selections from the collection, and a vinyl set from across Syria with Yamen Mekdad, Gergis’s Syrian collaborator on the project, will be held at London’s Mosaic Rooms on Thursday, August 12. The Archives will be launched online in October.
Titanium Escrow profile
Started: December 2016
Founder: Ibrahim Kamalmaz
Based: UAE
Sector: Finance / legal
Size: 3 employees, pre-revenue
Stage: Early stage
Investors: Founder's friends and Family
Milestones on the road to union
1970
October 26: Bahrain withdraws from a proposal to create a federation of nine with the seven Trucial States and Qatar.
December: Ahmed Al Suwaidi visits New York to discuss potential UN membership.
1971
March 1: Alex Douglas Hume, Conservative foreign secretary confirms that Britain will leave the Gulf and “strongly supports” the creation of a Union of Arab Emirates.
July 12: Historic meeting at which Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid make a binding agreement to create what will become the UAE.
July 18: It is announced that the UAE will be formed from six emirates, with a proposed constitution signed. RAK is not yet part of the agreement.
August 6: The fifth anniversary of Sheikh Zayed becoming Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with official celebrations deferred until later in the year.
August 15: Bahrain becomes independent.
September 3: Qatar becomes independent.
November 23-25: Meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid and senior British officials to fix December 2 as date of creation of the UAE.
November 29: At 5.30pm Iranian forces seize the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force.
November 30: Despite a power sharing agreement, Tehran takes full control of Abu Musa.
November 31: UK officials visit all six participating Emirates to formally end the Trucial States treaties
December 2: 11am, Dubai. New Supreme Council formally elects Sheikh Zayed as President. Treaty of Friendship signed with the UK. 11.30am. Flag raising ceremony at Union House and Al Manhal Palace in Abu Dhabi witnessed by Sheikh Khalifa, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
December 6: Arab League formally admits the UAE. The first British Ambassador presents his credentials to Sheikh Zayed.
December 9: UAE joins the United Nations.
Premier League results
Saturday
Tottenham Hotspur 1 Arsenal 1
Bournemouth 0 Manchester City 1
Brighton & Hove Albion 1 Huddersfield Town 0
Burnley 1 Crystal Palace 3
Manchester United 3 Southampton 2
Wolverhampton Wanderers 2 Cardiff City 0
West Ham United 2 Newcastle United 0
Sunday
Watford 2 Leicester City 1
Fulham 1 Chelsea 2
Everton 0 Liverpool 0
Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten
Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a month before Reaching the Last Mile.
Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
RESULTS
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UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 194hp at 5,600rpm
Torque: 275Nm from 2,000-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Price: from Dh155,000
On sale: now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
How to report a beggar
Abu Dhabi – Call 999 or 8002626 (Aman Service)
Dubai – Call 800243
Sharjah – Call 065632222
Ras Al Khaimah - Call 072053372
Ajman – Call 067401616
Umm Al Quwain – Call 999
Fujairah - Call 092051100 or 092224411
Tips for job-seekers
- Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
- Make sure you are an exact fit for the job advertised. If you are an HR manager with five years’ experience in retail and the job requires a similar candidate with five years’ experience in consumer, you should apply. But if you have no experience in HR, do not apply for the job.
David Mackenzie, founder of recruitment agency Mackenzie Jones Middle East
UAE v Zimbabwe A
Results
Match 1 – UAE won by 4 wickets
Match 2 – UAE won by 5 wickets
Match 3 – UAE won by 25 runs
Match 4 – UAE won by 77 runs
Fixture
Match 5, Saturday, 9.30am start, ICC Academy, Dubai
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump and Other Pieces 1986-2016
Martin Amis,
Jonathan Cape
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
Yahya Al Ghassani's bio
Date of birth: April 18, 1998
Playing position: Winger
Clubs: 2015-2017 – Al Ahli Dubai; March-June 2018 – Paris FC; August – Al Wahda
