Songs of the Syrian Revolution
Introduction to a new series on Hauntologies (free)
On the 30th of December 2011, surrounded by thousands of Syrian protesters in Homs’ Clock Tower Square, the ex-goalkeeper Abdul Baset al-Sarout led the crowd in singing one of the region’s most famous songs:
جنة جنة جنة والله يا وطّنا
Janna janna janna wallā yā waṭan-nā
(Heaven, heaven, oh our homeland [is heaven.)
يا وطن يا حبيب يابو تراب الطيب حتى نارك جنة
Oh homeland, oh beloved, oh good soil, even your fire is heaven.
(Yā waṭan yā ḥabīb, yā Abū turāb al-ṭayyib, ḥattā nārak janna)
By the time he was killed in combat in June 2019, al-Sarout had led hundreds of chants at protests throughout the country.
Caption: the song is from 00:38 onward
During another protest that took place just a few days later on the 3rd of January 2012, this time in Hama, Ibrahim Qashoush led the crowd in singing the following:
جنو جنو البعثية
لما طلبنا الحرية
Jannu jannu al-ba‘thiyyeh
lammā ṭalabnā al-ḥurriyyeh
(They lost their mind, they lost their mind, the Baathists lost their mind when we demanded freedom.)
Qashoush and his musical co-conspirators changed the term “heaven” (janna) to “they lost their mind” (jannou). As it happens, “Baathists” (Baathyyeh), a reference to the ruling Baath party in Syria which was in power from 19631 to 2024, rhymes with both freedom (Hurryeh) and thieves (Haramyyeh), so the rest of the chorus goes like this:
يلعن روحك أبو حافظ يا إبن الحرامية
Yil‘an rūḥak Abū Ḥāfiẓ ya ibn al-ḥarāmiyyeh
(Curse your soul Abou Hafez [Bashar Al-Assad], you son of thieves.)
Every verse is followed by a repeat of the chorus: ba‘thiyyeh (Baathists) and ḥarāmiyyeh (thieves), with ḥurriyyeh (freedom) stubbornly inserting itself between the two.
Death-defying
Since 2011, we’ve even seen a creative outburst of Arabic chants and songs from Syria.2
Part of their appeal is their malleability of being adaptable to the context in which they are sung. These include changing existing songs that were already known in Syria before 2011.
For example, at a protest in Da’el in February 2012 protesters changed the lyrics of “لزرعلك بستان ورود” (La'azra‘lek Bustan Wroudh, or “I would plant an orchard of roses for you”) by the late Fouad Ghazi (composed by Abdul Fattah Soukar) and called it “داعل يا أم الأحرار” (Da'el ya umm al-ahrar, or “Da’el mother of freedom fighters.”)
In it, they called attention to the Assad regime's bombing of Baba Amr: The lyrics go like this:
Baba Amr bleeds and the massacres are daily, and the world does not care. Where is Arab chivalry? The [United Nations] security council, deaf to our cries, did not hear the million-man march. Tell us how many it will cost; we want to liberate Syria!
In this song, as with many that preceded and that followed, protesters were referencing existing realities. They knew what was happening around them and they responded with death-defying chants celebrating life, solidarity, and revolution.
Creating a different temporality
Chants are often overlooked as being nothing more than momentary expressions of defiance.
In Syria, there was even a term, tanfīs (تنفيس), for a pre-2011 policy of the Assad regime to occasionally allow some critical voices to go unpunished. In an episode of The Fire These Times, the late Shareah Taleghani3 explained tanfīs to me as being a “safety valve” which “preserves the hegemony of a repressive regime by allowing the venting of frustrations that might otherwise be translated into oppositional political action.”4
In other words, the Assad regime occasionally allowed limited ‘venting’ as a way of prolonging their authoritarian rule. Under strict conditions, and as long as power is not threatened, some expressions of dissent were, occasionally, tolerated.
That said, and here’s the thing about tanfīs: a regime allowing some ‘venting’ is not always able to control its outcome.5
Say a demonstration is allowed. The regime has a certain intended goal with permitting it. For example, Israel is bombing Gaza and the regime knows that there are Syrians who would want to protest. It may allow a demonstration, as long as it doesn't last long and isn't too big.
While clearly performative, this doesn't change the fact that individual participants in that demonstration experience the same event in their own way. For some, regardless of how ‘fake’ it is, that demonstration might be a seed of defiance that is later nurtured. Getting a taste of something could still lead to something else, even if that original something was ‘meaningless.’
This is how I approach songs and chants deployed during uprisings, and I would argue that dismissing them reproduces the discourse promoted by authoritarian regimes.
To put it differently, just because both you and the regime know something is intended as tanfīs doesn't mean that it can't also help birth something much more dangerous for the regime.
So it is important to recognize that chants, alongside visual creations such as protest signs, memes, music videos, and so on, are tools of non-violent resistance, especially during times when taking to the streets becomes too dangerous.
Take this example: when the Assad regime was dropping bombs on Eastern Ghouta in March 2018, one defiant singer in south Damascus opted to release a video of himself singing al-hōdalak (عالهودلك) as well as janna janna for Eastern Ghouta, which was visible in the background. He asks Ghouta to forgive ‘us’ for failing to protect the city from Assad.
This specific version of al-hōdalak can be traced back to the origins of the 2011 revolution. Its main verse goes like this:
عالهودلك يابا عالهودليا
ما بدنا حكم الأسد بدنا الحريّا
ʿAl-hawdalak yā bā,ʿal-hawdaliyyah,
mā bidnā ḥukm al-Asad, bidnā al-ḥurriyyah
(ʿAl-hawdalak yā bā,ʿal-hawdaliyyah
We don't want the rule of Assad, we want freedom.)
Would we say that this act was futile?
In a sense, yes. Him singing that song had no impact on the bombs being dropped, but that would be missing the forest for the trees.
Him singing it in such a context, with the war quite literally visible in the background, was a way of connecting that specific event - the bombing on that day - to a broader story. This wasn't just an isolated event. Ghouta wasn't being bombed for no reason on that day in March 2018. It was being bombed for the same reason Assad bombed Syrian towns in 2011: because those towns rose up against his rule.
That one act, singing that song, at that time and place, March 2018 in south Damascus, allows us today to trace events and connect them in a broader story about a struggle. The lyrics, which I will explore in a more in-depth way in this series, include the phrase ma badna hokm al-Assad, badna al-hurriyeh (ما بدنا حكم الأسد بدنا الحريّا), or “we don't want the rule of Assad, we want freedom.”
A collective ‘we’ is therefore maintained from 2011 to 2018 (and onwards of course), the 'we’ that oppose the Assad regime.
Songs like al-hōdalak allowed Syrians to remind themselves and others that the nightmare had a beginning, and that therefore it can have an end. It was a way of rejecting the hegemonic hold that the Assad regime had had on Syrians’ temporality up until 2011. It was a way to create a new history, one which does not start in 1970 with the beginning of the Assad regime but in 2011 with the beginning of the Syrian revolution.
To put it differently, the repetition of certain chants and songs facilitated the creation of alternative temporalities to the Assad regime's.
Their success was demonstrated the days following the regime's collapse, with tens of thousands of people throughout the country spontaneously singing these same revolutionary chants and songs. For example, this is a video posted by Atef Nanoua from the coastal city of Jableh on December 10th 2024 with janna janna playing in the background:
The songs that we will explore
I will go through five songs and chants that I personally feel tell a wider story than might seem the case at first: al-hōdalak, yil‘an rūḥak, yalla irḥal, janna janna and ya yamma.6
Other songs and chants that I will likely include are wahid wahid wahid, ash-sha'ab as-suri wahid (‘one, one, one, the Syrian people are one’) and arguably the most famous one from the region: as'hab yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām (‘the people want the downfall of the regime.’)
I will keep this series free, but if you wish to support my work you can subscribe and also consider the paid membership to get access to all posts, free and paid. There is stil a 50% discount for those who wish to consider a yearly subscription, which would end up costing you some 25$ for the year.
Although the history most relevant to our purpose is after 1970 as that's when the Assad dynasty started with Hafez Al-Assad.
Even crossing the region’s colonial borders into neighboring Lebanon and Israel-Palestine. I wrote about the Lebanon ones for Shado Mag in 2019
Taleghani was a guest of The Fire These Times in November of 2011. Look up episode 93 “Syrian Prison Literature and the Poetics of Human Rights (with Shareah Taleghani)” wherever you listen to podcasts.
From her book “Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights” which I highly recommend.
I've mentioned this a few times on The Fire These Times, most recently on episode 181 (December 2024) with Margaret Killjoy called “Don’t Despair, We Got This w/ Margaret Killjoy.” I also recommend listening to the episode with Dana El Kurd from May 2022 entitled “Pro-Palestine Activism, Anti-Authoritarianism and Democracy in the Arab World.”
I haven't decided the order yet though. It doesn't really matter.