Şivan Perwer

Şivan Perwer (born 1955), the greatest contemporary Kurdish singer and composer, who alone composed the anthems of the Kurdish national movement. Born Şivan Kirmanj in the village of Sarı Kâmiş near Amed to a poor peasant family, he learned to play the saz from his grandfather and wrote his first songs at fifteen. He fled Turkey in 1976 after the authorities pursued him for his banned Kurdish songs. He lived in Germany in exile for 37 years, singing for Kurdish freedom in every hall of Europe and the Middle East. He composed hundreds of songs — from Kîme Ez ('Who am I?'), which questions identity; to Çiyayê Sipî ('The White Mountain'), which celebrates Kurdistan's beauty; to Xerîb, which weeps for the pain of exile. His songs became the anthem of every Kurdish demonstration. Kîme Ez is sung in every first Kurdish lesson; Şehmara ('The Serpent') comes from car radios in Afrîn, Qamishlo and Erbil; Helebce, his elegy for the victims of Halabja, became the collective Kurdish symbol of grief. His songs were played on peshmerga rifles and at Mahabad weddings alike. He visited Iraq in 2013 after 37 years of exile, and tens of thousands greeted him in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah as a father returning to his family. He performed the patriotic Ey Reqîb — which had become the Kurdish national anthem — at the festival of his return. Today Şivan lives between Germany and Kurdistan, and few Kurdish concerts anywhere in the world go without one of his songs. The slogan of two generations of Kurds: 'Şivan is my voice'.