The renowned Arab composer of Bosnian roots, Iyad Rimawi, whose popularity is also reflected in the number of views of his compositions on YouTube, which exceed 100 million, spoke for the N1 show "Izvan okvira" about his Bosnian origin, as well as his beginnings in music.

Rimawi, whose mother is Bosnian and whose father is Syrian, told N1’s Nikola Vucic how the year 1985 in Sarajevo was engraved in his memory, when he could feel rock'n'roll in the air, as a 12-year-old boy.

“That year, 1985, was, in my opinion, one of the best in Sarajevo in terms of music, and not only in Sarajevo but in the entire former Yugoslavia. That was the year of one of the best albums of ‘Bijelo Dugme’ and in the same year, Zdravko Colic sang the song ‘Ti si mi u krvu,’ at concerts throughout the Arab world, but also in Europe and the US.

“That music was in the air. You could hear the Sarajevo, Bosnian rock'n'roll, which sounded fantastic, wherever you went. It wasn't entirely Western rock'n'roll, and it wasn't folk either. It was something in between,” the popular composer from Damascus said for N1.

Furthermore, Rimawi explained that now, when he came back to his mother's hometown, he didn't feel the same air from 1985, when rock dominated the cultural and music scene.

“A lot has changed, and the war also affects a lot of things. The war has affected a lot of changes both here and in Syria, so I can't even expect to find the same atmosphere,” Iyad Rimawi said.

Syrian Rhapsody

Of Rimawi's many musical works, the Syrian Rhapsody stands out, which had its premiere in 2020 in a spectacular stage performance by over 100 musicians and singers, conducted by award-winning maestro Missak Baghboudarian.

The Syrian Rhapsody began in Dubai, at EXPO, with the performance of the oldest sheet music known to mankind, the ‘Hymn to Nikkal’, which was discovered on a clay tablet from 1400 BC in Ugarit, Syria.

Popularity in the Arab world

Iyad Rimawi is an extremely popular musician throughout the Arab world, and not only in Syria, where he was educated and where he lives today with his family. He is represented on all relevant music platforms including YouTube where he has over 270 thousand active followers and over 100 million views of his videos of stage and musical performances.

He himself admitted for N1 that on the eve of his first solo concert, which he gave at the Opera House in Damascus, he was not entirely sure what response his music would receive. However, the reaction of the audience positively surprised him.