Faraj Keddah

Afrah Houran 2 (Houran Weddings 2)

• Dabket Mejwez

• Jani

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This dynamic and vibrant live tape captures Hourani musician Faraj Keddah singing at a party in the latter-1990s. He launches his vocal phrases like arrows piercing through a curtain of heated strings, his singing interspersed with greetings to the audience that we can barely hear above the pulsing drum. Singer Faraj Keddah is from the town of Al Hrak in Daraa province, in Syria’s Houran region. Over the past four decades, Keddah has become one of the defining voices of Hourani shaabi music. Born in 1974, he began performing at local weddings as a teenager, drawing on the rich musical traditions of Syria’s southern borderlands with Jordan and Palestine. His earliest performances were recorded on cassette and circulated locally, where his distinctive voice and regional repertoire earned him a local following. Cassette recordings of his raw, energetic performances at village parties brought him wider recognition in the 1990s, and his name soon spread beyond Daraa, reaching Suweida, the Golan, Jordan, and beyond. Faraj's music is distinguished by its loyalty to local traditional music in terms of its themes, subjects, and arrangements, which primarily relies on mejwiz, rababa, percussion, qanun and more recently, keyboards. Keddah's voice has remained a fixture in the region’s folk music.