Born of exile: Arab electro duo Shkoon on uniting Arab and western musical cultures

In Beirut in early January, Syrian-German electro duo Shkoon performed in front of a mixed crowd of Lebanese and Syrians in a city and country just emerging from a brutal war waged by Israel. 

It was also only weeks since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, with Syrians in the audience travelling to the gig alongside those living in the country.

Syrian vocalist Ameen Khayer says: “There was a ceasefire deal, and the energy there was lifting us up, it was wonderful.” 

Producer Thorben Beeken adds that it was a gig they had wanted to do for some time: “We were just waiting for the moment to be able to go, to see all our friends.”

The Beirut show was one leg of an Arab regional tour for a band that was formed almost accidentally. The uprising and war in Syria brought them together as artists a decade ago.

“Lebanon feels like the only place in the world where no matter what’s around them that’s happening, they try to just look at the positive side of the story, and try to have a space for themselves to enjoy their time,” says Ameen, who has lived in Germany after leaving Syria at the height of the civil war.

“The country itself is suffering, you know, there’s no electricity, they didn't have a president.”

‘It came by coincidence’

Ameen was imprisoned by the Assad government in his home city of Deir Ezzor in 2015 where he was studying as a marine engineer.

“I was in jail for 34 days - they took me from the university because of a report from another student who was working for the secret service and it was because of me being active against the system. It was part of the revolution.”

Following his release, he reluctantly decided to leave the country and made his way to Europe, like hundreds of thousands of other Syrians. 

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After an epic journey on foot, he ended up sharing a flat in Hamburg with musician Thorben and several others. 

“By coincidence we were chilling in the kitchen one evening and Thorben and his partner, she started playing and they asked me if I could sing, and I sang, and Thorben told me ‘I do music, do you want to do something?’ 

Their first gig was a fundraiser for people in trouble with the law in Europe for helping refugees. 

Thorben explains: “I asked Ameen if he wanted to join, and we had never done anything before, and he was like yeah let’s do it, so we locked ourselves in for the day and that night we did it.”

And in one evening, Shkoon was born.

“We were not even planning to do Shkoon, it came up by coincidence,” says Thorben.

This spirit of bringing people together, defending solidarity with refugees, and uniting people from different backgrounds is at the core of Shkoon’s musical and political approach.

The duo have donated revenues from their shows to aid for Gaza and to Syrian earthquake victims.

Influences

Last January they performed a spectacular gig in front of Egypt’s pyramids to launch their album Masrahiya.

In their growing body of songs and albums, and their new single Jadal, elements of techno and deep house are fused with Ameen’s Arabic lyrics, along with Arab instrumentation, to create an ambient but danceable sound that has evolved over the years. 

“Where I come from on the east side of Syria, Deir Ezzor, we listen to a lot of Iraqi folk music,” Ameen says.

“The whole Euphrates river region, we all kind of listen to the same folk music. I got raised on it, my father played it and sang it all the time when I was a kid, and I grew up with classical old Iraqi music.”

Shkoon began adapting these famous Arabic songs in a new style with electronic and house scores to take them to a new audience, both German and Arab.

“In the beginning we were focusing mostly on those Arab folk songs, as a source of their music together, but then now I want to develop myself by writing my own lyrics.”

Ameen and Thorben are reluctant to pigeonhole their eclectic style: “I hate frames and I hate genres,” says Ameen. 

“Me and Thorben we come from two different backgrounds of music. Thorben was studying piano as a kid, you come from a classical background, and I come also from a different classical background in the Arab world. 

“I listen to Um Kulthum, I listen to Mohammed Abdel Wahab, I listen to all the big names in the Egypt world. We call it experimental, more than techno or deep house. Techno is huge, there are a lot of genres.” 

Thorben says the “frame is the message more than the musical genre. And it's trying to be as honest as we can with our feelings [to] open up a space for everyone who wants to connect and exchange.”

The German question

As for the new song Jadal, Ameen explains how it responds to the politically charged environment that has emerged with the Gaza war.

Germany has supported Israel in its onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza, while cracking down on pro-Palestine protests at home with a concurrent rise of the far right in Germany. 

Ameen says that “Jadal” translates to the English words “debate, conflict, discussion”.

“In the last couple of years…in the community, in the society around us, the people are discussing and clashing face to face with each other. 

“And this song kind of translates my experience, on a personal level, and on a wider angle, in the society around me, what I am witnessing.” 

'I’m going to be a father soon and I don’t want to leave my son, just to go somewhere and not be able to come back'

- Ameen Khayer, vocalist, Shkoon

When asked by Middle East Eye about how they feel about the possible outcome of the upcoming German election on Sunday where the far right AFD is surging in the polls, Ameen answers in one word: “Terrible.” 

Ameen still has refugee status and does not have German citizenship. 

“I am not able to vote [in the election] as I’m not a German guy, and I am not also Syrian. I’m in between. I have a travel document that was sucking my energy in the last five years. I was not able to travel and do my job around the world.”

Ameen says much of what Shkoon do is an effort to fight back against the Islamophobia that has been spreading in much of Europe: “I think in our music, we are trying to prove that the borders between multiple different cultures [don’t exist], because when we go to a concert and we perform our music, you can see from the people in our show, it’s not only Arabs, or not only Germans, like multiple nationalities are joining.

“This unity, it's maybe gonna show the other perspective, [that] people can unite.”

During their recent tour of the Gulf and Lebanon, Ameen could not do parts of the Gulf tour, due to his refugee visa status.

Ameen has not been home for a decade, but with the fall of the Assad regime, he hopes to soon, German bureaucracy allowing. 

“I hope I can go home as soon as I can, but I live in a bureaucratic country...I’m going to be a father soon and I don’t want to leave my son, just to go somewhere and not be able to come back.”

But he’s optimistic that will change. “I think I’m going to have my German citizenship [soon] and I’m going to go get my Syrian citizenship back and go visit the family. I wish that I don’t just do one show, I’m going to go to each city and show how beautiful Syria is.

“The fall of the regime was a relief for all of us also. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next four years but I have a gut feeling that the people there will rebuild Syria.” 

Playing Bataclan

He says that the problems and challenges Syria faces are almost unique. “The last regime left the country below zero, from all perspectives - no education system, no hospitals, no money - and now the new system needs to kind of save it. 

“But I’m kind of waiting for how the people respond. It’s on us - if we want to rebuild Syria, we have to do it, not the government, because governments are, for me, just big lies, just to control power.”

'It's a big question in art if anything can be really finished'

- Thorben Beeken, producer, Shkoon

Last February, Shkoon played at the now infamous Bataclan in Paris, the site of the horrific Islamic State attack of 2015 - they both describe the gig as “beautiful”.

Thorben says it was important to play in a place that carried such a negative memory and in a country that had become hostile to many of its Arab and Muslim citizens: “Knowing so many people who were from Arab backgrounds, migration backgrounds, who were not feeling welcome any more since Bataclan happened, who were looked at in a different way, who lost their jobs working there since the attacks in 2015. And being able to open the space again felt healing for a lot of people.”

But then the next day the gig sparked a storm in France’s right-wing media. “We didn’t know but people told us that people were going nuts on it,” Thorben recalls.

Ameen insists that this was not the families of the victims of Bataclan atrocity who were protesting over their performance, some of whom he said expressed “all the respect and all the love”. 

“It’s the Islamophobia that Thorben is talking about, like if you are just a little bit darker skinned you are considered an extremist, an Islamist who wants to kill everyone. And this is not acceptable any more, it’s 2025.” 

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With their current European tour, they are also using audience interaction to evolve songs old and new. Thorben explains: “The release now, Jadal, we had the idea before we started the tour, but we developed the music and the lyrics throughout the tour with the people.” 

For both of them, their songs are created with their audiences, rather than as finished products. “That’s the whole idea," says Thorben. 

“Let’s not come up with musical ideas and bring them to the people, it’s more like coming with an open sketchbook to the people that we develop together and we have the outcome afterwards.” 

“Since the beginning we did it like this,” agrees Ameen.

“We are not perfectionists,” says Thorben. “It's a big question in art if anything can be really finished, even when you look at the word ‘release’, as a musical term, you let go, it's not about finishing something.

"That’s what we truly believe in: art, and especially music, is a constant development.”

Shkoon will be playing in Toulouse, France on 21 February, Paris on 22 February, Basel, Switzerland on 28 February, Cologne, Germany on 8 May and Berlin on 24 May.