The way of Kurdish Music
Despite the ban, Kurdish music has remained very much alive and dynamic. It flourished in every major Kurdish city and throughout the diaspora. With contemporary music stars such as Aynur and Sivan Perwer making their mark in the global world music scene today, the breadth and the variety of Kurdish music is beginning to reveal a history that has not been well known in the west.
After the break up of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the land where the Kurds had lived contiguously was divided up between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. With their cultural and human rights largely decimated to varying degrees (depending on the country they inhabited), Kurdish music has provided an important unifying link and lifeline for the Kurdish people. To understand the complexity of Kurdish music and identity, one must first understand something about the centrality of the Kurdish language.
Many historic and geographic factors contribute to the dialects of the Kurdish language but the biggest factor remains the partitioning of Kurds among four separate countries. The dialects are: Kurmanchi, Sorani, Gorani, Hawramani and Zazaki. The largest Kurdish population lives in Turkey, followed by Iraq, Iran and Syria. The current Kurdish population is estimated to number 40 million. The majority of Kurds are Muslim, but many are also secular Alevi or Ahli-Hakk, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian and Ezidi.
Kurdish musical forms are generally tied to the occasion for the music and the singer. The classical singers are known as stranbej, dengbej and chirokbej, and each style has its own emotional timbre. Other forms known as lawik, heyran, shevbiherk, payizok, lawje, dilok or narink, accompany life cycle events or recount epic themes of struggle, separation, weddings, love and renewal. Kurdish music often reflects the long suffering of the Kurdish people under several occupiers, which fill the repertoire of the dengbej singers. Epic songs are full of lament, while love poetry feeds ecstatic Kurdish music. Kurdish line and circle dances known as halays are driven by an intense percussion where both men and women dance together and may last for hours accompanied with zirne and dohol. A Kurmanchi-speaking Kurdish singer may often sing in Sorani or in Zazaki dialect underscoring the natural cultural connections among all Kurds. The rich and varied Kurdish instruments include tembur, buzuq, cuzele (lutes); blur, qernete, shimshal, zirne (flutes and shawm); dahol and def (percussion). Central to Kurdish sacred music are the instruments tembur and daff which accompany the vocals.
The greatest historical Kurdish poet and musician who immigrated to Spain in the 9th century was Ziryab, who established a musical school and the genre best known as Andolusian. He created many classical maqams (modes) as well as improved the oud, which contributed to the development of the European lutes.
Philadelphia Inquirer