Meryem Xan, singer

Meryem Xan (1904-1949) was the first female singer to record in Kurdish. In her time, Kurdish society considered it shameful for women to become musicians, and most Kurdish singers were men. She blazed the trail.

Little is known of her life. She was likely born in Botan. In the 1920s her family resettled in Syrian Kurdistan. She learned to sing in the tradition of dengbêj. She met the intellectuals Celadet Alî Bedirxan and Kamuran Bedirxan and  married into the Bedirxan family. But her husband was uncomfortable with her being a dengbêj, and she left him.

She went to Zaxo in 1924, then to Mosul in 1936, then to Baghdad, where she met well-known dengbêj singers. Her artistic life peaked as she recorded her songs for a British music company, which released them. She joined Baghdad Radio and broadcast her songs over its airwaves.

Meryem Xan opened the way for the many later Kurdish women artists, and her songs have been sung by many of both sexes in the generations that followed.

You can explore her surviving recordings here.