A Yorkshire Kurd in Yerevan
Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006
Almost everyone that knows me remembers that inbetween visiting Karabakh in 1994 and moving to Yerevan in 1998 I spent years working on the Kurds and human rights in Turkey. Ironically, it was even the Kurds that brought me back to Armenia after so long away. Visiting the country to research the Yezidi minority for the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), I was offered a job with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and set foot on Armenian soil in October 1998.
Many Armenians advised me to steer clear of Kurdish issues in Armenia, but old habits die hard. A year and a half ago I wrote my most recent article on the Yezidi in Armenia for Transitions Online.
The Yezidi community is the largest ethnic minority in Armenia even though it numbers just a few tens of thousands of adherents. Although their precise number worldwide is unknown, the followers of this ancient religion are spread throughout Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and, as recent immigrants and refugees, Germany.
Widely misconceived as “devil worship,” Yezidism in fact combines elements from Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Yet despite the widespread belief that they are also ethnic Kurds who resisted pressure to convert to Islam, there have been attempts in Armenia to identify the Yezidis as a separate ethnic group since the last years of Soviet rule.
Soviet-style demography, which determined communal identity based on language and largely ignored religion, identified the Yezidis and Muslim Kurds living in Armenia together as members of the same ethnic group. But by 1988, during the period of glasnost, some of Armenia’s Yezidi religious and political leaders began to challenge this notion and the “Yezidi Movement” was formed.
The following year an appeal was made to the Soviet authorities requesting that the Yezidis be considered a separate ethnic group. The request was granted, and in the last Soviet census conducted in 1989, out of approximately 60,000 Kurds who had been formerly identified as living in the Soviet Republic of Armenia, 52,700 were for the first time given a new official identity as Yezidis.
Because of the sensitivity of what appears to be an artificial division of the Yezidi in Armenia in ways that do not exist to such an extent elsewhere I’ve always made my interviews on the subject freely available so people can read everything that was said and make their own mind up. As a result, this work is apparently read a lot by Kurdologists and others working on the Yezidi, and so I get to meet a lot of researchers and academics when they come to Armenia to study the republic’s largest ethnic minority.
So, in addition to a French academic in town at present, it’s been a great pleasure this week to meet Nahro Zagros, an ethnic Kurd from Iraq now living and studying in the UK. The Guardian published a piece on him last month.
A long, painful journey brought Nahro Zagros from classically trained violinist and lecturer in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to playing gigs in Hull with a band called Yorkshire Kurd.
Soon he is off on another journey to Armenia to study the music and culture of the semi-nomadic Yezidis. For, with help from the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara), Zagros is doing a masters degree in ethnomusicology at York University, researching how music can display cultural identity.
[…]
Following a short visit to Kurdistan to see his relatives, he was imprisoned for nearly six months in 2000. He fled Iraq shortly afterwards.
Dispersed to Hull, he sought out other musicians and formed Yorkshire Kurd, playing gigs to raise money for refugees and giving workshops and performances in local schools to promote diversity. They have also performed at festivals in Britain and abroad, playing a fusion of Middle Eastern music, swing jazz, eastern European Gypsy music and Jewish klezmer. “We like to combine all these great tunes and show people we can work together and promote integration through music.”
In particular, Nahro is interesting because of his love of music. In fact, it seems as though he can’t live without it. On Friday, for example, while celebrating his birthday, he soon forgot that he was a customer at one bar/restaurant in Yerevan and had to get up to play. Actually, he apparently does this wherever he goes — including during research trips to Yezidi villages. He also has a great love for Armenian culture and it was interesting to learn from him that Komitas, for example, composed songs in Kurdish as well as Armenian, Persian and Turkish.
Would love to hear some, but anyway, it’s been a delight to meet Nahro and I hope to have more on him in the context of the Yezidi and Kurds in Armenia at a later date.
Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006
interesting stuff, and never heard anything about Komitas writing in Kurdish, although I had read someplace about him composing in Turkish. I am not surprised though, Sayat Nova too was very “multicultural” if you will in his compositions, and at one point Azeris claimed him as their own untill the war broke out. btw have you had the chance to see Vodka Lemon, or maybe did you have a hand in it?
Comment by artyom — April 16, 2006 @ 7:10 am
Hi Artyom, would you believe that I still haven’t seen Vodka Lemon although I’ve heard much about it. Unfortunately, I also didn’t have a hand in that — it’s just academic and university researchers that I meet up with here and not filmakers.
Incidently, the Kurdistan Bloggers Union has something on Vodka Lemon here, and Kurd Media has something here.
Comment by Onnik — April 16, 2006 @ 10:22 am
BTW: There’s more posted about the Yezidi and Kurds in Armenia and Turkey on this blog under the appropiate categories:
http://oneworld.blogsome.com/category/yezidi/
http://oneworld.blogsome.com/category/kurds/
Comment by Onnik — April 16, 2006 @ 11:04 am
i am going to be in armenia in late may, if i don’t forget i will try to fetch a copy of vodka lemon for you to watch. but if you get your hands on beforehand watch it. its fine film.
Comment by artyom — April 16, 2006 @ 11:29 am
Incidently, there’s a rather nice site on Komitas in English, Armenian and Russian:
Virtual Museum of Komitas Vardapet
http://www.komitas.am/
It only makes a passing reference to his Kurdish stuff, though.
Anyway, Nahro tells me that Komitas was fluent in Kurmanji Kurdish and apparently considered his grasp of that language to be almost on the same level as his Armenian. Interesting, but as Artyom says, not so surprising given two other Armenian cultural icons, Sayat Nova and Paradjanov, who also used regional cultural influences in their work.
Paradjanov even employed a Kurd in the role of the central figure in Ashik Kerib, an Azerbaijani love story, and of course, the wonderful Georgian actress, Sofiko Chiaureli, as Sayat Nova’s muse in Color of Pomegranates. Talking of Ashik Kerib, and the fact that Paradjanov says that Kurds in Armenia were not Moslem I can’t help but wonder if Yuri Mgoyan wasn’t Yezidi as some say that even today if they’re living in predominently Armenian villages.
Anyway, I absolutely love this quote from the maestro himself.
Interestingly, Paradjanov shot the film in Azerbaijan even though the pogrom in Sumgait had already occured.
Anyway.
Comment by Onnik — April 16, 2006 @ 11:40 am
it’s amazing how music and culture can do miracles into penetrating people’s hearts and surpasing the borders of land ……..
Comment by sarcastictothebone — April 16, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
Let me know when this guy might be playing somewhere, or else maybe you can introduce me to him at some point during his stay here.
Comment by Christian — April 17, 2006 @ 5:37 pm
One can ponder about massacres , and go to see movie or listen enemys’ music.
Comment by Garo Sernaz — April 20, 2006 @ 3:07 am