Aynur Doğan is Kurdish singer from Turkey. Deriving her style from the intermixing of the vocal traditional of her people (who comprise approximately 18% of the population of Turkey) and Western influences, she enlivens traditional songs with a flair that has global appeal.
This song comes from her 2011 album, released a year before far-right groups in Turkey forced her to move to The Netherlands. She has continued her music career there, keeping Kurdish traditional music alive with a vibrant flair all her own. I greatly enjoy the traditional instruments in this recording; I believe the first song I’ve chosen to share that has primarily non-Western instruments.
This is perhaps the first time minority language group I have chosen to investigate for this assignment has been actively threatened by politically-motivated actors in recent living memory. Such a background gives my project of finding minority language pop music a whole new dimension. Doğan and musicians like her are not only creating music to keep their language alive and thriving, but as an act of resistance against those who would see them removed from their country.
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