Meet Hasan Nakhleh, singer and keyboard player of the band Tootard. He started the band with his brother Rami when they were both living in the Golan Heights. Since then they have gone through several line ups and their style has changed from Mali blues meets Arabic reggae to a kind of 80’s Levantine disco sound, like on their latest album Migrant Birds. 

In this interview Hasan Nakhleh talks to Markus Görsch about the band’s dream of traveling freely, about relocating to Europe, and how a cheap oriental-scale synthesizer caused a sort of Proustian madeleine-experience. And why the band chose the name Tootard, meaning “strawberry” in Arabic.

Listen to the episode on Soundcloud, Spotify, iTunes or Podcaster