Kevin Bronson on August 1st, 2014

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The legend of Syrian pop singer Omar Souleyman added another short chapter on Thursday night, as he turned a big crowd at the beach into a dance party at the Twilight Concert Series at the Santa Monica Pier. Souleyman [there’s not two of him; that’s a double exposure at the top], who rose to prominence in the Middle East as a wedding singer, plays a synthesizer-fueled strain of Arab folk music that favors dabke, a form of line dancing. And on Thursday, it turned the beach into a disco. Local dance-punk outfit De Lux set the stage, with teenage quartet the Slightlys kicking things off. The free series resumes next Thursday with Jagwar Ma and Fascinator.

Photos by Carl Pocket, courtesy of Spaceland Presents