MA Music Center

The MA Music Center opened in Amed (Diyarbakir) in 2017, a year after the state-installed trustee shut down the Aram Tigran Conservatory.

The Aram Tigran Conservatory had been established within the Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality in 2010. It provided Kurdish-language music instruction.

When the trustee closed the conservatory in 2016, it dismissed the faculty. Some 35 of the teachers, with the support of some 400 families and NGOs in the city, went on to establish the MA Music Academy, independent of the municipality. It continues to teach mother-tongue music. 

Since March 3, 2017, MA Music has promoted mother-tongue music under the slogan “Music for Everyone, Everywhere.” Its Zarok Ma academy has educated thousands of children young people from the age of four.

Orchestras and Choirs

MA Music maintains the MA Orchestra as well as a women’s choir and a children’s choir.

Its Natural Rhythm Orchestra teaches children that nature has a rhythm.  Children age four and over can take part in this orchestra, which performs with the message “Listen to the Rhythm of Nature,” using instruments fashioned from recycled materials.

MA Music also has a Memory Center that documents traditional Kurdish music. It records, transcribes, and notates the music of of dengbêjs and stranbejs. The transcribed music is then archived for use by musicians either as notated or reinterpreted.

Coordinator Şêrko Kanîwar

MA Music’s coordinator is Şêrko Kanîwar, who also makes videos like this one with KOM Muzik.

On April 25, as Şêrko Kanîwar was at Amed Airport returning home from Europe, the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office took him into custody. It was part of a larger sweep: on the same day, in 21 cities, the office raided the homes of 191 people, including journalists and lawyers, and took them into custody. More than 50 were imprisoned.

MA Music Days, June 7-11

This year the center will present the fifth annual MA Music Days, under the slogan “Em ê zarokên vî welatî bê muzîk nehêlin,” or “We will not leave the children of this country without music”.