Aynur Doğan to play Carnegie Hall May 5

Aynur Doğan (b. 1975) is a Kurdish singer and composer from Bakur who has brought the traditional Kurdish music to the international stage, blending it with Western music. Her music has won global acclaim and allowed her to become a cultural icon of Kurdish people internationally.  

Doğan was born in Çemişgezek, a village in Dersim province in eastern Turkey. She belongs to the Alevi community, in which singing is interlinked with spirit—she sang from girlhood.

In 1992, due to the Turkish state’s destruction of Kurdish villages, her Alevi family fled to Istanbul. There she encountered musical styles from all over the world. She studied saz and türkü singing at the Arif Sağ Müsik.

Her first album, Seyir (2002), gained widespread attention. Her second was Keçe Kurdan (Kurdish Girl, 2004). The title song encourages women to assert their rights against male domination. In 2005 a court held that the song encouraged women to leave their men and go to the mountains, hence promoted “division.” So Keçe Kurdan was banned. (The ban was lifted a year later.)  In this video, filmed in 2017, Aynur sings “Kece Kurdan.”

She has appeared in several films. In 2005, she played herself in Yavuz Turgul’s Gönül Yarasi, becoming the first performer to sing a Kurdish song on screen in a film shot in Turkey.  Also in 2005 she appeared in Fatih Akın’s documentary Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul. The film follows bassist Alexander Hacke as explores Istanbul’s music scene, encountering both traditional Turkish music and rock and hip-hop. Her singing role helped raise her to stardom. 

, Doğan’s later albums include Rewend (2010), Hevra (2013), Hawniyaz (2016), and Hedûr (Finding Comfort)(2020). Throughout her career, her primary inspiration remains the traditional Kurdish folk songs of her village.  Her lyrics speak to the life and sufferings of Kurdish people, especially  women. She sings of identity, love, loss, and pain.

In 2012, following repeated threats by right-wing and anti-Kurdish militants, Doğan relocated to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.

She has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. In 2015: The Music of Strangers, directed by Morgan Neville, a documentary about the ensemble.

In 2017, Aynur Doğan received the Master of Mediterranean Music Award in the category of “Mediterranean Women in Action” from the Berklee Mediterranean Music Institute. The award recognized her efforts to preserve and reinterpret Kurdish folk music.  In August 2021 she received the Womex Award for her resilience in performing in an environment where she faced discrimination both as a Kurd and as an Alevi.

In 2022 the Turkish state’s repression of Kurdish culture again had consequences for her.  In June she was to give a concert in the western seaport city of Derince, in Kocaeli province. But on May 15, Kurdish Language Day, the municipality abruptly canceled that the concert, calling it “not appropriate.”

Aynur Doğan often performs in Europe. In April and May 2023, she will tour the United States, with performances in in La Jolla, San Francisco, Seattle, Schenectady, and New York City. She will play Carnegie Hall in New York on Friday, May 5.  Tickets are available through her website. Here is an article about her current tour.