Siin Experience to celebrate second anniversary with DOBé, Rolbac, Ralph Nasr and Peter K

Can you tell us about the background? When did you start the event series?

I started Siin Experience two years ago. Yes, there was an underground scene before which was very small with 100-150 people around 2016. Then we came as Siin Experience. We were like 5 partners at that time; now we’re 8.

I started working in July 2021. We took it over ground, our first event at Gaia Beach Club. The event was amazing, we had like 900 attendees. As I told you before, it was around 100 to 250 people.

What was your inspiration when launching Siin Experience?

I started because the people in Syria needed to fun, needed to live like everyone. You can’t do anything you’d like in our country. No artists wanted to come to our country. You can’t import anything you’d like to our country because of sanctions, because of politics, because of whatever. This was the main problem and people here were living in war for like 7-8 years. They were depressed, had nothing to do, wanted to have fun but they couldn’t. So that was the main reason.

I wanted to show the world that we can do it, Syrians can do it, Syrians have the right to live their lives, Syrians have the right to enjoy their lives. We have been in a war, it’s not our fault that our country is living in a war. All the politics are pushing on us to make our lives harder. So starting from that, I had the idea, went to my partners and asked them why we don’t do this and said “Let’s have fun”. It started like this. It wasn’t a business company, it wasn’t anything. It was just like five people who wanted to enjoy their lives, who wanted to bring a new thing to the people in order them to enjoy their lives.

How did you build it?

It was like building a dream team. I started to build my partners. I went to the people that I knew they were hardworking ones, had a good PR capabilities, and played good music. All these combinations were great even at the very beginning. It was literally like building a dream team. After our first event, it was like out of this world here. You can consider because there were no electronic beach parties, there were no big events, there were no big production, all of that. And then when we came, we did all of that. We started with an event for Boshoco, our partner.

This was our first event actually. He is now a musical director at our company. And then we started to bring regional DJs. Then we started to bring international DJs. We brought a lot of big names the likes of Nakadia, Agents Of Time, Lica, Joone, Ae:ther and Undercatt. All of these names came here and enjoyed their journey in Syria and it was a very beautiful experience for them. Then the world started to know that, okay, this country is living in a war, but these people can do the things that they're into. You know, when you start to do things with with the minimum resources and you do beautiful things, then you have people try to support you from outside of Syria, including European artists and other regional artists.

We had all the support from everyone. Then we started to organise events at some beautiful, historical locations. We went to Damascus Citadel, we went to a Krak des Chevaliers, we went to Khan Asaad Basha. All are like 800 plus years old. We started then to bring big names to these locations. We filmed DJ sets at these locations and this is like the story.

Are there any issues that you need to solve with priority?

We had no issues actually. The main issue is the media. The media shows that Syria is not safe. Now, if you open your internet browser and write “I want to go to Syria”, all the websites in the world you encounter will say you you should not go there. But actually a lot of people come here. A lot of tourists come here from from Germany, Spain, Italy, USA, from everywhere. You can check out YouTube channels. You can see like travel bloggers going around Syria.

Syria is safe and it’s beautiful. It’s rich with its culture. It’s rich with historical places. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world is Damascus. So we have a rich history. We have a rich culture. We are a civilised people, not like the media shows.

This was the main problem because contracting with all the agencies was hard in the beginning. They all thought that it was not suitable to do something in Syria. But you know, when you start and you do what you put your mind to one after another, people started to understand that. And a lot of international outlets, international newspapers started to write about us.

Please give some information about the local artists in the scene. Was there already a underground scene?

Yes, for sure. There are local artists and there are local artists who have started to be regional and international. We have G The Doctor, we have Boshoco. Also we have the people of underground who started the scene back in 2015. It’s the company called Underground Syria founded by Saadi Mahdi. We have a lot of Syrians who are working outside of Syria. You know, when when the war started, a lot of Syrians started to go to Germany, the UK, the US, and a lot of them became DJs and became well known. And they came back and they played here.

I can easily tell you that we have the best crowd maybe in the whole world. People here are thirsty for music, thirsty for dancing. When you live in a country that’s all about war and about working hard just to live in hard financial situations and hard unstable financial conditions. So you just need to work in order to basically live. Then you have this platform, this safe platform to go and dance, and relieve yourself. This is what all Siin Experience is about.

It’s like giving joy to the people. You can ask all the DJs and get an answer that this crowd is one of the best crowds in the world because they are thirsty. They want the music, they respect the music. They want to have fun. They want to enjoy.

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Siin Experience is celebrating its 2nd anniversary with a series of parties. The first part will take place on August 3 with DOBé, Rolbac, Ralph Nasr and Peter K at Gaia Beach Club. Follow Siin Experience's Instagram account here to keep up with the latest updates.