Ahmad Tilawi

Saraqib

• Part 1

• Part 2

Artist Origin

More Info

An hour long recording of a series of mawals performed by Ahmad Tilawi in a wedding party of Al Badran family back in 2009, in his home town of Saraqib. The cassette is distinguished by its acoustic, string arrangement that fills most of the tape, and complements Tilawi's rural timber and style of singing. Ahmad Tilawi is considered a cornerstone in the recorded archive of the Syrian shaabi music scene. His was strongly present in the 1980s and 1990s, performing ataba, shaabi, mawwal, and dabke at private parties and weddings, to the extent that it became difficult to check a few cassettes in our archive without encountering his name. Sharing the stage with Tilawi was a rite of passage for entering the shaabi scene for several female and male singers, such as Fariha Al-Abdullah, Ibrahim Al-Saad, and Hussein Al-Abdullah, especially in the field of ataba, which Tilawi’s name became synonymous with. Tilawi lived in his city of Saraqib in the countryside of Idlib for most of his life, and did not leave it, heartbroken, until armed conflicts forced him to do so.