Nabeel (نبيل) is seeking harmony between Iraqi culture and Virginia’s indie music scene

Merging college-rock influences with allusions to Iraqi heritage and musical traditions, Nabeel(نبيل)’s music is driven by both the preservation of culture and creating a new sound.

“I’ve always been obsessed with pop music.” Yasir Razak, founder of Iraqi-American indie band Nabeel (نبيل) is recalling the antics of his younger self over Zoom. He tells me how he and a friend would scale the tall trees in their neighbourhood, reciting Backstreet Boys and NSYNC lyrics to one another. “We would hide from everybody and trade parts – I’d be Kevin [Richardson] and he’d be AJ [McLean].”

At home, in contrast, Razak was immersed in Iraqi culture and the Arabic language, the child of immigrants who moved to the US when he was still a baby. “I was often at the house alone with my mom who only spoke Arabic at the time,” he says. “I feel very sentimental about the language because it sometimes feels like it was a direct transmission from my mother and father.”

For Razak, Nabeel has been a chance to find harmony between two cultures. It was while he was a student in Virginia that he discovered the local independent music scene; at the same time, he found himself being pulled towards his heritage, drawn in by old family photos. Existing in a predominantly white DIY space, Razak found himself wondering whether a world of Middle Eastern indie music existed that he was yet to discover. “As an immigrant, you have this imagination of what it might have been like to have grown up in your home country. Would I be writing these same songs? Would I have been interested in the same music? But, also, it’s thinking about the continuity of history and what kind of future, art scene and culture could have flourished in a place like Iraq had there not been such violent interruptions to the culture and to the history.”

After completing a postgrad, Razak found himself in a “goofy” pop band called TV Sunset, which he started in 2018 with best friend Travis Legg. He would write pop songs for the band on a Casio SA-76 toy keyboard, gifted from a “psychedelic friend” in North Carolina. The experience taught Razak to lean into a free-spirited creative practice – something he’s carried into his work with Nabeel. “Until that point, I had almost no belief in myself as a musician, so I will always feel indebted to Travis in a way,” he says. 

Nabeel feels emblematic of Razak’s strong ties to Virginia’s DIY indie music community: Razak met Jake Golibart (lead guitar), Kyle Grim (bass), Danny Gibney (drums/producer) and Dane Ludwig (drums) in Harrisonburg, VA. By 2021, this group of friends had started making and recording music, and the first Nabeel song, Ras Alsanna (رأس‭ ‬السنة), was released in February 2022. The track, like so much of Nabeel’s music, drips with a distinctly college-rock influence: the rough-hewn vocals of Kurt Cobain and the DIY qualities of Virginia’s indie scene. Alongside these, Razak also weaves allusions to Iraqi heritage and musical traditions. The lyrics are intentionally short and emotionally potent, drawing on styles of non-western poetry and communication. “If I told you I need you/ how long would it last?” sings Razak on last summer’s fuzz-caked Lazim Alshams (لازم‭ ‬الشمس). On EP Najoom (نجوم), which roughly translates to “Stars”, ringing guitars buffer Razak’s distorted vocals as he articulates a sense of despondency and yearning, and thoughts of family. 

Now, working on his fourth, as-yet-unnamed EP, Razak is aiming for something “more mature” and progressive than his previous work. “Stylistically, it’s fun because there’s a couple of slowcore songs, some sort of pop [sounds], and there’s almost a butt rock song on the EP, which I’m very excited about,” he beams.  

At the heart of the project, though, is this preservation of language – and with it, culture, histories and personal stories. “To try and preserve the connection to Arabic feels extremely important,” he shares. “With all that’s going on in Palestine, with what’s going on all over the Middle East, there’s such an incredible loss. I want to do the work of fighting erasure and I know that’s not an individual task. Placing value in language [is] one of the most important things that we can be doing.”

Sounds like: Living in an A24 movie scene
Soundtrack for: Yearning for home
File next to: Aurat, JAWS
Our favourite song: Lazim Alshams (لازم‭ ‬الشمس)
Where to find them: @thearabsheriff