Mark Gergis has had what he calls an “obsessive” love of music since he was a child. Born to an Iraqi father and American mother, Gergis grew up in Oakland, California, listening to Iraqi music at home or at family weddings in Detroit, Michigan, where a lot of his family is based. Eventually he took a broader interest in Arabic music as a whole, but there wasn’t much of the genre in the American market in the 1990s. So Gergis had just one option to feed his growing obsession. He…
