Syrian Cassette Archives

Syrian Cassette Archives is a non-profit initiative preserving Syria's cassette era, roughly the 1970s through 2000s. Founded by archivist Mark Gergis, who amassed hundreds of tapes during visits to Syria between 1997 and 2010, and researcher Yamen Mekdad, the project launched as a public online archive in 2021. Its collection spans Syrian Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian communities alongside displaced Iraqi music, covering classical repertoire, folk, dabke, shaabi pop and live concert tapes. Since Syria's 2011 war disrupted musical networks, the archive pairs digitization with recorded oral histories from musicians, keeping the collection free for research and cultural memory.