Syrian Casette Archives
| Syrian Casette Archives | |
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| Biography | Syrian Cassette Archives is an independent research and archival initiative dedicated to preserving, sharing, and presenting sounds and stories from Syria’s abundant cassette era (1970s–2010). Founded in 2018 by researchers and producers Mark Gergis and Yamen Mekdad, the project explores cassette culture as both a sonic and social practice, focusing on music that circulated outside official institutions, state media, and formal archives. The growing collection reflects the diversity of Syria’s musical landscape, including recordings from Syrian Arab, Assyrian, Kurdish, and Armenian communities, alongside Iraqi, Lebanese and other regional recordings available on cassette in Syria at the time. It spans studio albums, live concert and wedding recordings, devotional material, and regional folk pop traditions. The archive developed from early personal collections and field research in Syria and has continued to expand through the contributions of collaborators and communities. Alongside digitisation, Syrian Cassette Archives produces interviews with musicians and producers from the era, curated audio features and essays, examining how cassette ecosystems functioned through shops, duplication, circulation, and labour. Preservation and research are ongoing and distributed, developed in collaboration with researchers and contributors inside Syria and across the diaspora. |
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