Rizan Said

Rizan Said is the keyboard virtuoso of the Syrian Jazeera — Omar Souleyman's musical architect for over two decades — and his instrument is the factory preset, bent past recognition: Korg patches programmed to speak as zurna, saz, tanbura, and buzuq, an entire wedding ensemble collapsed into a single pair of hands moving at lightning speed.

Rizan Said was born in 1978 in Ras Al Ain, in the Jazeera region of northeastern Syria. A prodigy on percussion and reed instruments, he took up the electric keyboard in the early 1990s and became a defining synthesist of Syrian and Kurdish dabke, programming Korgs to emulate zurna, saz, tanbura, and buzuq. He recorded prolifically on the Syrian cassette circuit and spent over two decades as Omar Souleyman's musical architect, touring internationally. His solo albums include King of Keyboard (Annihaya, 2015) and Saz Û Dilan (Akuphone, 2019). Ma Waraa Al-Shaabi is his third, and his first for Kou Records.