Music of peoples inhabiting the Kurdish homeland (fig.1) and diasporic communities outside it.
2. Main secular musical forms, performance and performers.
STEPHEN BLUM (1, 5, bibliography), DIETER CHRISTENSEN (2, 3, 6), AMNON SHILOAH/R (4)
Most of the approximately 25 million people who identify themselves as Kurds inhabit a contiguous territory of some 320,000 km2. In this area Kurds are a majority, and they call it Kurdistan (‘land of the Kurds’). It extends from the eastern Pontus and Taurus mountains through the northern and central Zagros mountains to the Mesopotamian plain and is divided between the states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In both Turkey and Iraq, Kurds constitute over 20% of the total population. The official names of most Kurdish cities and regions differ from their Kurdish names, e.g. Mahabad (Sawj Bulaq to Kurds). The major regions shown in fig.1 bear the names of Kurdish principalities that flourished between the 16th century and the mid-19th.
Outside the Kurdish homeland, there are substantial Kurdish populations in north-eastern Iran, central Anatolia, Istanbul and Ankara. Virtually the whole Jewish community of Kurdistan emigrated to Palestine, then to Israel between the mid-1920s and early 50s. In the second half of the 20th century a large Kurdish diaspora in Europe (and, to a lesser extent, North America) supported musical and other cultural activities. Recordings produced in Europe by Kurdish musicians find appreciative audiences in the homeland. The musical idioms now recognized as ‘typically Kurdish’ are those that have been most effectively diffused via recordings and the broadcasting media.
For most of recorded history, Kurdistan has been a region of great religious diversity. The pre-Islamic festival of Newroz (New Year, spring equinox) is celebrated with its attendant ceremonies and dancing, and it is a powerful symbol within diasporic communities. Since the 16th century most Kurds have been Sunni Muslims, following the Shafi‘i school of jurisprudence; the Shi‘a minority has been estimated at up to 7% of all Kurds. The Qadiri and Naqshbandi are the most important Sufi brotherhoods among Sunni Kurds. Three heterodox groups have developed distinct musical practices: the Alevi, Yezidi and Ahl-e Haqq (see §4 below). Judaism was a presence from at least the 2nd century ce until the founding of the state of Israel. Several medieval writers refer to ‘Christian Kurds’, and Kurdish adherents of the Church of the East and Syrian church music are still found in southern Turkey and western Iran. In eastern Anatolia the Christian influence of Armenian culture is still felt.
The two main dialect groups are Kurmanji and Sorani, which belong to the south-western branch of Iranian languages; they are divided by a linguistic boundary extending north-east along the Great Zab river. Although standard forms of Kurmanji and Sorani were developed in the 20th century, sung poetry often makes prominent use of local dialects. For example, Kurdish listeners quickly recognize songs in the Kurmanji dialect of Badinan (northern Iraq). Hewrami and the related language Zaza are central to the musical practices of the Ahl-e Haqq and Alevi, respectively. Speakers of Hewrami or Gurani regard it as a form of Kurdish; Western linguists usually classify Hewrami and Zaza among the north-western Iranian languages. Many Kurds are bilingual, speaking Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Armenian or neo-Aramaic in addition to Kurdish. Some songs in current repertories are contrafacta, which fit Kurdish lyrics to melodies borrowed from non-Kurdish sources.
Literary sources for the study of Kurdish music include historical chronicles such as the 16th-century Şeref-name of Bitlisi, the narratives of travellers such as Evliya Çelebi, sacred texts of the Ahl-e Haqq and other religious orders, manuscript collections of poetry intended for singing, and modern publications in Kurmanji and Sorani (some including musical notation). The first substantial efforts to notate and analyse Kurdish music were made by the Armenian composer, singer and scholar Komitas Vardapet (1869–1935). Ethnomusicological fieldwork has not been carried out in all regions, and the extent to which common musical features exist within the different Kurdish regions is somewhat unclear.
Many Kurdish musicians have gained widespread popularity Sayid ‘Ali Asghar Kurdistani and Miryam Khan were prominent singers in the 1930s and 40s. mohammad Mamili was a major figure whose death in 1999 was a significant political event. The Kamkars, a family that performs as a group of singers and instrumental players, are very famous in Iran, Iraq and within the Western diaspora. Şivan Perwer, a singer who accompanies himself on the bağlama (fig.2), has attained star status; he was the major Kurdish singer in Europe until other singers such as Naser Razzazi also became refugees.
While an abstract concept of ‘music’ equivalent to Western notions is alien to most Kurds, their thinking about performance and expressive behaviour is rich in categorizations and terminology. The following account deals primarily with Muslim Kurds living in the Hakkâri and Siirt provinces south of Lake Van in Turkey, but draws on Kurdish practices in western Iran and northern Iraq for comparison. Regional variance is greatest within forms and terminologies related to work and within ceremonial contexts such as wedding ritual. The broadest commonalities can be found in categories with narrative content, and in those connected with dancing.
The Kurds of western Hakkâri (south-eastern Turkey) distinguish three categories of sung narrative according to the prevailing content. Çîrok û stran (‘legend or story with song’) refers to the telling of usually fabulous stories in spoken prose, with songs for the main characters embedded in the tale. The songs are often metric and in rhymed verse; they may be of various kinds, e.g. dance-songs, lullabies or songs from the other two narrative categories (şer and evînî).
Şer (‘battle, fight’) designates the sung heroic narrative proper, where the subject is always a fight between men and the song uses poetic imagery to praise the human qualities and exceptional courage of the protagonists, who are known or believed to be historical figures. Other terms for this are lawje şere, xoşmêr, mêrxoş, mêrkanjî and beyt. These narratives are almost always named after their heroes. The story is usually widely known at least in general outline, and the performance of a heroic song is understood and judged as an interpretation rather than as the presentation of something new, although news of remarkable contemporary events may be spread through this medium.
A şer consists of a variable number of long strophes with roughly similar melodic and rhythmic outlines. Each strophe tends to begin with long-spun melismas and ends on long-drawn tones, both supported by vocables such as lêlê/lolo or phrases such as ax aman. In between, the account of the dramatic events is advanced in rapid parlando recitation. Many sers employ a vocal range of an octave and a half or more, beginning each strophe near the upper limit and ending near the lower, but some heroic songs move narrowly within a 4th or 5th. Depending on the singer's skill, the presentation of a şer may take an hour or more.
Evînî (from evîn: ‘love’) are normally dramatic accounts of events that involve a tragic love relationship, which usually leads to violence and death, though there are also lyrical love songs. Their form and mode of presentation are very similar to those of the şer: strophic, with extended initial melismas followed by rapid, narrow-ranged, unmetred recitation and concluding long-held tones. Intermediate melismas may provide rests for the singer and listeners.
Narratives are always rendered by men whose skills are recognized or who strive for recognition. These skills include a fine, high-pitched but strong voice, an unfailing memory and the ability to interact with listeners and recreate and interpret stories that are generally known. However, in Hakkâri as elsewhere, a distinction is made between singers who expect material rewards for their services and those who do not accept any remuneration.
The professional bard, variously known as lavjebij, dengbij and beytbij (‘sayer of songs/sounds/poetry’), follows a code of conduct that forbids him to sing or join in dance-songs without adequate reward. Lavjebij bards are found mainly east of the Great Zab river (in the eastern part of the former principality of Culamerg), and into north-western Iran. In the Iranian province of Kordestan, professional bards are known as beytbij (see Iran, §III, 4(ii)).
Towards the west, in the area of the former principality of Badinan, musical professionalism is deemed unworthy of a ‘free’ tribal (‘eşîr) Kurd, and storytelling and public epic-singing are left to the şa‘ir poet and to roving lavjebij bards from the east. The şa‘ir is a local man held in high esteem, but not paid. Itinerant dervishes also perform narratives, always accompanying themselves on the frame drum (fig.3). They have a repertory of their own, which includes epics and legends cast in rhyming verse, and classical forms such as qesîde (from the Arabic qasīda, ode). Narratives are also performed by the mitirp (from Arabic mutrib: ‘a singer’), professional musicians and craftsmen locally described as Gypsies or ‘Turks’.
The foregoing description applies primarily to the south-western province of Hakkâri and Siirt in Turkey, but it has close parallels in Kurdish western Iran, in particular around Mahabad (Sawj Bulaq), where a hierarchical system of landownership and patronage that existed before the 1979 Revolution had contributed to the development of Kurdish professionalism in music, reflected primarily in the narrative genres and in urban music practices. Similarly, in northern Iraq there flourished the singing and reciting of Kurdish poetry in several genres in addition to those discussed here (see Iraq, §III, 3). Most of these share the general characteristics described for şer and evînî: they are strophic forms combining elaborate and wide-flung melismatic singing with the recitation of dramatic texts. Increasingly these genres are accompanied by long-necked lutes (bağlama or saz) and also non-Kurdish urban instruments such as the qānūn (zither) and ‘ūd (short-necked lute), so that rural Kurdish epic singing is assimilating into a generalized West Asian urban style.
Throughout Kurdistan the ensemble of oboe (zurna) and double-headed cylindrical drum (dehol) is used to play for dances that involve a chain of dancers moving anticlockwise in a large circle. The instrumentalists are generally professional mitirps. Melodies are adaptations of regional or urban popular songs, and the dance movements are not specifically Kurdish but are of a generalized West Asian style.
In contrast, dance-songs (lawke govende, or simply govend) are sung in regional versions by Kurds of either sex, without instrumental accompaniment. The dancers form a single line, shoulder to shoulder, holding one another, often with arms crossed behind their backs (fig.4a). Two types of dance-song may be distinguished. The antiphonal type, in which equal numbers of singers alternate, predominates in eastern Turkey and western Iran. The responsorial type is frequent in northern Iraq, along with the antiphonal, perhaps under urban influence.
Dance terminology applies to textual content (şer or evînî); to rhythmic patterns and steps (yekpêyî, dûpêyî, sêpêyî have ‘one-’, ‘two-’ and ‘three-steps’, respectively); to movements of the upper body (ya mila: ‘with shoulder’, or ya desta: ‘with hand’), and to tempo (sivik, light and fast, or giran, heavy and slow). Dance types may also be named by association, e.g. swarkî (‘horseman's dance’) imitates the jumping of a horse, and şêxanî (‘belonging to a sheikh’). In comparison with narrative songs, the texts of dance-songs are not considered to be important, yet some evoke noted events such as an aeroplane crash or images of the distant past such as the assembly (dîwan) of the princes of Culamerg who were vanquished in 1848.
Performances of antiphonal dance-songs employ either two single singers or two groups of two or three each. These may be all men or all women. The second singer or group repeats the melodic phrase and text line of the first who then proceeds to the next stanza on the same melody. The alternation of single singers is the prevailing practice east of the Great Zab river and in western Iran. The singers may vary their rendition in consecutive strophes, which may lead to polyphony when the strophes overlap. Individual strophes are short, their melodic range rarely exceeding a 5th. Strophic forms are highly regular and can be ordered into a small number of types. The structures of antiphonal dance-songs are very consistent throughout the Kurdish area, and they also correspond with those of other West Asian peoples (Turks, Arabs and Persians). What sets Kurdish dances apart are the language and the preferred high and tense vocal quality.
The alternation of singers also predominates in these genres. Weddings among the Ertoşi of western Hakkâri require that men and women sing at certain moments of the ritual. Women of the bride's family sing narînik before the departure of the procession that will take the bride to her husband. Serke zava (‘over the groom’) is a genre sung upon her arrival at the groom's house, when the couple first sits together. Thereafter şeşbendî are performed by men or women, or by two men and two women from the groom's family, in alternation. In all these cases, the singers stand still or sit, the performance is antiphonal and the traditional texts are sung syllabically on loosely metred melodies. In comparison with dance-songs, the tempos of ceremonial songs are much slower and the melodic ambitus tends to be wider. Where the voices of women and men alternate, they perform the same melody but on tonal centres a 4th or 5th apart.
Work songs include lullabies (narînik/lori, according to region) sung solo by women in short repetitive musical phrases to pacify infants, and solo butter-churning songs performed by women while shaking a bag of milk supported in a tripod. Men sing antiphonally while crushing wheat in a mortar to prepare bulgur; their songs have extremely short phrases whose duration matches a stroke with the mallet.
In the second half of the 20th century, rural performance practices in Kurdistan focussed on the entertaining of guests by village and tribal elders, and on wedding celebrations. Guests were – and still are customarily entertained with the reciting, in prose and song, of narratives. If professional musicians (mitirp) are available (fig.5), they will undertake the task, often to the accompaniment of a spike fiddle (riçek). In eastern Kurdistan, a professional lavjebêj may be invited and remunerated with ‘robes of honour’, whereas in the west a local şa‘ir may be called upon. Competitions of epic singers, who will alternately recite, vying for the applause of the listeners, add excitement to such occasions. The invoking of heroic deeds of the past, of the dignity of great men and the wonder-world of ancient myths and legends can instil both pride and tolerance. Competitions of epic singers representing parties in conflict have on occasion settled disputes (e.g. over pastures or rights-of-way for flocks) among nomadic tribes or within village settlements.
The major occasion for dancing and singing, however, is the wedding celebration. Professional musicians playing oboe and drum are hired to lead the dancing throughout the three or five days of the feast and to accompany the wedding procession. Men and women usually dance separately to their own singing, and the telling and singing of stories at night contribute to the festive mood of this occasion for sociality that brings the entire settlement or tribes of the bride and groom together (fig.5).
Some highly developed and unusual musical concepts and practices are found within certain of the Sufi brotherhoods and heterodox sects. For an account of music among the Alevi/Bektaşi followers, see Islamic religious music, §III, 2 (i).
The 60,000 to 70,000 members of the Yezidi sect are concentrated in the Mosul area of Iraq. Their doctrine includes ancient pagan, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Muslim and Christian elements. Music and dance form an essential part of their worship. Their official musicians, the qewwals (‘those who speak’), are clergy of minor rank and form a guild said to number 50 men. These must take part in all religious festivals and in events in the life-cycle such as circumcision and burial ceremonies. The two principal occasions are the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of their prophet, Sheikh ‘Adi, and their New Year. The musicians accompany the ceremonies with flute (ney or şebbabe) and frame drums (def), which are all considered sacred. They sing hymns and ecstatic songs, perform dances and fulfil other services. The koçek (dancers) serve in considerable numbers at the tomb of Sheikh ‘Adi and as ministrants to the qewwals.
Members of the Ahl-e Haqq sect live mainly in southern Iran. Their doctrine has been influenced by ancient Mesopotamian and Iranian religions, as well as by Islamic mystical orders. They believe in cycles of incarnation and in theophany, i.e. manifestations of God and angels in human form throughout history. Through music, the worshippers can gain access to the mysteries of the sect, so that music constitutes a central part of their liturgy and spiritual life, and all the religious leaders are musicians. In the first theophany, the king of kings is said to have possessed 900 singers, 900 frame-drum players, 900 tembûr (long-necked lute) players and 900 blûr (flute) players. At present the tembûr is the only instrument used in the sect's ritual music, and it is venerated as a sacred object (for illustration, see Iran, III, fig.3). The musician who plays it and sings the sacred texts is called kelam-xwan (‘reciter’). The repertory has two main categories: the destgah and the hymns (qewl). The 12 destgah pieces have points in common with Persian art music. The hymns draw their melodies from sacred and secular sources. They are integrated in the liturgy, are performed responsorially by the recitant and the worshippers to the accompaniment of the tembûr, and are solemn and moderate in tempo.
Most of the instruments played by Kurds are shared with neighbouring ethnic groups. These include the frame drum (def, dayre, bendêr), goblet drum (dimbek), oblique rim-blown flute (blör, blûr, blîl, şimşal, şebbabe), duct flute (blûr, pîk, dûdik), whistle (pîk or fît fîte), double clarinet (dûzele or zimare; qoşme among the Kurds of north-eastern Iran) and cylindrical oboe (nerme ney, qirnate, balaban). The familiar duo of cylindrical drum and conical oboe (dehol û zurna or saz û dehol) is often played at Kurdish weddings by professional musicians who are not always Kurdish.
Spike fiddles (kemançe, riçek) are played in certain parts of Kurdistan and by many Kurdish musicians in north-eastern Iran. The long-necked plucked lutes of Kurds in Kurmanji-speaking areas are usually called saz, like those of the neighbouring Turks and Azeris; in north-eastern Iran Kurdish narrative song is accompanied by the dutar. The long-necked tembûr is the sacred instrument of the Ahl-e Haqq of southern Kurdistan; it has two strings tuned a 4th or a 5th apart, with the higher pitch doubled by a third string, and it accompanies the singing of sacred texts (kelam) in the spiritual assembly (Kurdish cem, Arabic jam‘). The sacred instruments used in Yezidi ceremonies are the rim-blown flute şebbabe and the frame drum with jingles (def), both of which are themselves ‘baptized’ before being used in ceremonies of baptism and in other rites.
In the second half of the 20th century Kurds almost everywhere came under increasing pressure to hide or deny their Kurdish identity. Their music, language and distinctive dress have become arenas of conscious negotiation with dominant powers: police and military forces acting on government policies, especially in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and immigration officials in the European diaspora, notably in Germany. Since the 1940s, radio transmissions have played an increasingly important role in bridging the gap between rural dwellers, cities across the Kurdish area and the wider world. In the 1950s villagers in the relatively secluded Turkish province of Hakkâri were listening to the state radio of Soviet Armenia, which transmitted regularly the recitation of Kurdish epics in Kurmanji by noted bards. In the 1990s cassette tapes with Kurdish titles featuring historical recordings of epic singers and urban Kurdish dance music were traded in Istanbul for the benefit of the large population of displaced rural Kurds in that city. Kurdish music and dance-songs play an important role within diaspora community celebrations (see fig.4b).
Komitas: Mélodies kurdes (Moscow, 1904/R)
O. Mann: Die Mundart der Mukri-Kurden (Berlin, 1906–9)
W. Ivanov: ‘Notes on Khorasani Kurdish’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xxiii (1927), 167–235 [incl. texts of sung poetry]
M. Mokri: Gūrānī yā tarāne-hā-ye kordī (Tehran, 1951); repr. in Études métriques et ethnolinguistiques: les chants éternels kurdes (Paris, 1994)
D. Christensen: ‘Kurdische Brautlieder aus dem Vilayet Hakkâri, Südost-Türkei’, JIFMC, xiii (1961), 70–72
D. Christensen: ‘Tanzlieder der Hakkâri-Kurden’, Jb für musikalische Volks- und Völkerkunde, i (1963), 11–47
D. Christensen: ‘Volks- und Hochkunst in der Vokalmusik der Kurden’, Volks- und Hochkunst in Dichtung und Musik: Saarbrücken 1966, 128–31
Q. Fattahi-Qazi: Manzume-ye kordi [Kurdish popular poetry] (Tabriz, 1966–73) [Kurdish texts with Persian trans.]
D. Christensen: ‘Die Musik der Kurden’, Mitteilungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, i (1967), 113–19
D. Christensen: ‘Zur Mehrstimmigkeit in kurdischen Wechselgesängen’, Festschrift für Walter Wiora, ed. L. Finscher and C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1967), 571–7
M. Mokri: ‘La musique sacrée des Kurdes “Fidèles de vérité”, en Iran’, Encyclopédie des musiques sacrées, ed. J. Porte, i (Paris, 1968), 441–53
E. Gerson-Kiwi: ‘The Music of Kurdistani Jews: a Synopsis of their Musical Styles’, Yuval, ii (1971), 59–72
C. Celîl: Kilam û miqamêd cimeta kurda, i (Moscow, 1973/R)
D. Christensen: ‘Ein Tanzlied der Hakkari-Kurden und seine Varianten’, Baessler-Archiv, xxiii (1975), 195–215
D. Christensen: ‘On Variability in Kurdish Dance Songs’, AsM, vi (1975), 1–6
L. Picken: Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey (London, 1975)
K. Nezam: ‘Kurdish Music and Dance’, World of Music, xxi/1 (1979), 19–32
S.Q. Hassan: Les instruments de musique en Irak et leur rôle dans la société traditionelle (Paris, 1980)
A. Tatsumura: ‘Music and Culture of the Kurds’, Senri Ethnological Studies, v (1980), 75–93
C. Celîl: Kilam û miqamêd cimeta kurda, ii (Moscow, 1986)
S. Esma‘îl Şêxanî: Serbirdey komele heyran-bêjêkî kurd [Biography of a group of Kurdish heyran singers] (Baghdad, 1988)
C. Celîl: Zargotina Kurdên Sûriyê [Folklore of the Kurds of Syria] (Uppsala, 2/1989) [Romanized text; orig pubn 1985]
J. During: Musique et mystique dans les traditions de l’Iran (Paris, 1989)
W. Ehmed: Amêrekanî mosîqay kurdi [Kurdish musical instruments] (Arbīl, 1989)
M. Bayrak: Kürt halk türküleri (kιlam û stranên kurd) [Songs of the Kurdish People] (Ankara, 1991)
Kürt müziği (Istanbul, 1996) (incl. repr. of Komitas Mélodies kurdes, 1904)
C. Allison: ‘Old and New Traditions in Badinan’, Kurdish Culture and Identity, ed. P. Kreyenbroek and C. Allison (London, 1996), 29–47
S. Blum and A. Hassanpour: ‘“The Morning of Freedom Rose Up”: Kurdish Popular Song and the Exigencies of Cultural Survival’, Popular Music, xv (1996), 325–43 [Middle East issue]
F.C. Allison: Brides, Battles and Brothers of the Hereafter (London, forthcoming)
Kurdish Folk Songs and Dances, coll. R.P. Solecki, Ethnic Folkways FE 4469 (1955)
Kurdish Folk Music from Western Iran, coll. D. and N. Christensen, Ethnic Folkways FE 3103 (1965)
Kurdish Music, coll. C. Poché and J. Wenzel, Philips 6586 019 (1974), reissued as Kurdistan, Auvidis D 8023 (1989)
Kurdish Music, Bärenreiter-Musicaphon BM 30 SL 2028 (1979) [incl. notes by K. Nezam]
Chants du Kurdistan, perf. S. Perwer, Auvidis A 6145 (1989)
De Soran à Hawraman: chants du Kurdistan, perf. Groupe Musical du Kurdistan, Al Sur ALCD 125 (1994)
Kurdistan: zikr et chants soufis, coll. J. During, OCORA C 560071–72 (1994)
Iran: bardes du Khorassan, coll. A. Youssefzadeh, OCORA C 560 136 (1998)