Arts Canteen proudly presents TootArd.

Formed by brothers Hasan and Rami Nakhleh, whose home is in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, TootArd are a ‘mountain rock reggae’ band seeking to transcend their circumstances’ privation and isolation, by making joyful, captivating, wittily ironic music, interweaving West African, Saharan and Caribbean strands with classical Arab modalities.

TootArd توت أرض are a young, trailblazing band from the occupied Golan Heights who deftly fuse Levant-tinted desert blues, melodic psych-rock, morphed reggae and classical Arabic modalities. Their second album ‘Laissez Passer’ (out now), is their debut international release and one of the first such releases from their homeland. Restless, buoyant and eclectic.

“They’re a funky desert blues outfit but they don’t derive from Saharan Africa, they were born and raised in the Golan Heights, the region Israel grabbed off Syria in the Six Day War of 1967, then fully annexed in 1981, claiming it as Israeli territory … TootArd’s way with a groove is compulsive and liable to drag listeners bobbing and dancing.” The Arts Desk

“A rich amalgam of adapted sounds from across the Arab world and beyond, with little concern for genre boundaries.”