In the hands of Kurdish-Syrian “King of Keyboard” Rizan Said, the synthesiser becomes an improbable orchestra, its sounds stretched and distorted. His musical vocabulary draws on the traditions of the Jazeera region, where Kurdish, Arab, Syriac and Armenian cultures have long intersected, and on shaabi, a broad term for popular, often working-class music associated with street celebrations, weddings and communal dancing. Through turbo-fast ornamentation and extravagant pitch bends, Said transforms these familiar musical idioms into something poised somewhere between folk music and science fiction. His earlier album King of Keyboard, with titles such as “Electric Mawwal”, “When Vans Turned Into Clubs” and “Cosmopolitan Hacha”,…

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