Nooriyah: The DJ celebrating the global south’s musical prowess

We can confidently say that Nooriyah is bringing real partying back. You may recognise her from her Boiler Room set named after the collective she founded—‘Middle of Nowhere’—where she brought her Baba, sporting a hatta and thobe, tearing it up on a oud, to complement her set. One minute, her crowd is in tears over Mohammed Assaf on the strings—the next, they’re shaking their hips to a DJ Snake x Maghreb Riddim mix. Saudi-born, raised in Japan, and now based in the UK, Nooriyah is a DJ, audio producer and curator, committed to celebrating the addictive sounds of SWANA, along with Brazilian funk, trap, drill, and every miscellaneous genre you’d never think could work all together. With her upbringing (and music taste) spanning continents, Nooriyah is challenging the Western-centric prevalence in dance music, bringing to light exactly how Arab composers have covertly shaped the global scene. 

Watching her work, Nooriyah is unequivocally in her element, as though she’d DJ’d in a previous life. “I deeply deeply love music and I love pressing buttons; DJing is the ultimate combo of both,” Nooriyah shares with Dazed MENA with a refreshing frankness. She explains that she initially began curating lineups after eight years of championing SWANA sounds through articles, radio shows, films, and documentaries, all while playing them as a DJ. “I reached a place where I was feeling bored of the line ups I was booked to play as well as the music played in events and club nights that existed in our space.”

Anyone who listens to Nooriyah’s sets knows they’re characterised by their jarring diversity that somehow completely synergises. This isn’t a gentle, vanilla incorporation of slightly unconventional music—Nooriyah had “I Like to Move It” right before Hisham Abbas. She had the Super Mario theme over a Dabke beat. In any given set, no one is standing still. “I didn’t want to create something that excluded itself by only playing SWANA music,” Nooriyah clarified. “I didn’t think something like that would progress the narrative at all or help reshape how SWANA music was engaged with at large, so it inspired me to play what I play and then to start Middle of Nowhere.”

This fascination with how music travels inspired Nooriyah to launch an Instagram video series exploring the ways in which Western music has been inspired by Arabic sounds in 2021. Her videos elucidate that producer Timbaland is a key culprit here, with his samples of Abdel Halim Hafez, Mayada El Hannawy, and Warda underscoring the hottest tracks of the 2000s; with that, the series sparked conversations about how SWANA music’s spirit is imbued in the backings of these major hits. With her keenly trained ear, tactile knowledge, and intent audience, Nooriyah uncovered to tens of thousands the impact that Arab composers have furtively made on the global music scene. 

This intricate knowledge of traditional Arabic music and her undeniable ear is clearly genetic; that is what made the choice to bring her father to her debut Boiler Room set an obvious one. “It made no sense to me to curate the first SWANA line up in UK history without baba by me,” she tells us. “The oud had been baba’s best friend since he was a teen. They’re so attached at the hip that he plays it even when on the toilet. He inspired a lot of my earlier musical taste.” The set achieved over a million views in its earliest months, and its comments are flooded with recurring visitors, many deeming it the best Boiler Room set of all time.  

Her work has not diverged since her emergence into dance music, even with the international acclaim she has since received. Nooriyah has performed at the most seminal venues and music festivals globally, including Glastonbury, Nitsa, and sold-out headline shows at London venues like Jazz Cafe, KOKO, Colour Factory, and EartH. She’s produced work for BBC 4 and scored audio-visual projects in film. She’s on a roll—one smooth enough to rival her sets. “I curated a jazz line up made up of local bands from the region,” Nooriyah affirms. “On another occasion, I curated an all-SWANA female rap cypher in Saudi Arabia. I love listening to what’s going on in the region and in the diaspora and then bring it together when resources allow.”

The changes the DJ is hoping to drive with her work are threefold, all centring on giving SWANA sounds as equal a space as any other sound on the global music table: “I hope to, one, show how infectious SWANA sounds are,” she states. “Two, play SWANA music in a more engaging way so that the market for artists is widened, and three, show how the sounds can be played alongside any other genre under the sun.” 

Nooriyah makes seemingly impossible splicing of sounds completely and inherently right for each other. It’s Maghrebi trap and Japanese hip-hop. Reggaeton and Indian film pop. Her mixing of ‘Khusara’ with Cardi B’s ‘Bodak Yellow ‘, seemingly blasphemous even in consideration, turns out to be a match made in rave heaven. A living antithesis to caricatures of Saudi women, pioneer of sonic syncretism, and general curator of incredible vibes, Nooriyah is a cultural phenomenon by any and all means—one we hope to see much more of. “If by doing all of that I can humanise our people more on a global scale I would be happy with my work.”