The electro club night serving Arab Berliners a dose of nostalgia — with a twist
Nour Nouralla founded Sahra to fill a gap in Berlin’s world-famous nightlife. But Germany’s cultural landscape remains hostile to Arab cultural events
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Rozy El Eid immediately recognised the melody the DJ was mixing in. It was Alf Leila wa Leila by Egyptian singer and songwriter Umm Kulthum. The rhythm brought back joyful childhood memories of dancing at family weddings in her home country of Lebanon. This time, though, the tune was sped up, with a techno beat. Around her on the dancefloor other partygoers lifted their hands in unison, whooping and cheering. “I’d never heard a song like that played in a club setting,” the 31-year-old doctor said. “It was such a cathartic moment.”
El Eid has been a regular at Sahra — Arabic for a night out — since discovering the Berlin club night two years ago. The party aims to build a bridge between the city’s famous club culture and the music that members of Berlin’s large Middle Eastern and North African diaspora grew up with, fusing nostalgic Arabic oldies with techno and electronic beats in a genre known as electro Swana (short for south-west Africa and north Asia). On the dancefloor you can hear traditional Levantine folk music, Egyptian pop hits and emerging experimental genres such as oriental techno. This year, Sahra was recognised by Berlin’s Clubcommission — an association representing the city’s nightlife industry — with a best newcomer award.
It is the brainchild of Nour Nouralla, a 34-year-old product designer originally from Syria, who quit New York for Berlin five years ago. Nouralla quickly built a large friendship group of others from the Swana region who enjoyed going out and exploring the city’s techno clubs together. “But when we got together casually, we always ended up playing the familiar Arabic hits from our childhood,” she said.
When 50 people gatecrashed her 32nd birthday party at a Berlin bar in early 2022, explaining that they just wanted to dance to the Arabic music her friends were playing from YouTube, “it made me realise there was a whole crowd in the city that wasn’t being catered to,” she said. The idea for Sahra was born.
Nightclubbing is big business in Berlin. World-famous clubs such as Berghain and Tresor draw thousands of tourists all year round, and in 2018 the club scene generated $1.7bn in revenue. Techno culture has even been recognised by Unesco as part of the city’s cultural heritage.
But the industry is also extremely competitive and Nouralla initially struggled to find a venue that understood her vision.
“If you’re a famous techno club, you’re not going to want an Arabic night on the weekends because you have a reputation to uphold,” she said. Meanwhile, many of the venues that were more welcoming to international music were booked up on Fridays and Saturdays a whole year in advance. “You need proof you can bring a crowd, which makes it hard for newcomers,” she said.
Eventually, in July 2022, Nouralla found a 100-person venue to host a Thursday night party. “We were so scared no one would turn up, but we completely sold out,” she said. After three more sold-out events, Sahra moved to a bigger venue. Today it has a regular weekend slot at Badehaus Berlin, a 400-person club known for eclectic programming and live music in the fashionable former East Berlin district of Friedrichshain.
At first, the lack of similar parties meant there weren’t many DJs playing the Arabic electro fusion Nouralla had in mind. One she tracked down via social media was Hiba Salameh, a Palestinian DJ-producer from Haifa, Israel, who is now a Sahra resident.
Salameh grew up listening to her parents’ favourite records. As she grew older, she tried mixing these sounds with contemporary music. Although she still lives in Haifa, Berlin has become a second home. “I could never travel to places like Lebanon or Syria because of my [Israeli] passport,” she said. “Berlin is a melting pot where I’ve met people from other countries who speak the same language as me and who listen to the same songs.”
Others sharing Nouralla’s vision have helped to establish electro Swana as a distinct genre, with parties such as New York’s Laylit and British-Lebanese DJ Saliah pushing the sound forward. It’s good timing for Sahra, which now has a steady roster of Berlin-based artists and international guest DJs. In November 2024 Nouralla also threw her first international event in Paris.
The cultural landscape, however, has become tougher for Arab cultural events in the past year. After Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel, a number of pro-Palestinian artists and creatives in Germany saw their events cancelled and, in some cases, were threatened with funding cuts. Nouralla said she had to cancel two consecutive parties after one venue told her they did not want attendees to wear pro-Palestine symbols in case of a backlash. “We don’t want to have to micromanage the crowd and tell people what they can wear on their shirts,” she said.
The question of how to remain joyful in turbulent times, and what role nightlife can play in social justice, has loomed large over the party. “I struggle with this every day,” said Nouralla. “But I think that more than anything we need to be taking up space. And maybe cultural and artistic spaces can be forces for good, too — whether that’s through promoting talent, fundraising, or just creating safe spaces.” The emergence of other Swana-orientated parties in Berlin, such as queer Arabic pop night Adira and IÇ IÇE, a festival for new Anatolian music, gives her hope. For El Eid, the past year has felt increasingly hostile owing to crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism and a far-right political surge. She now feels nervous speaking Arabic in public or wearing symbols such as a keffiyeh. But clubbing offers a refuge. “It’s such a relief to have a party like Sahra,” she said. “I never have to feel policed, or like someone is judging me.”
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