Sakina Teyna X Salah Ammo
Concert, lecture and talk with Zehra Baraçkılıç
What happens if your home and homeland are just imaginations that have been gambled away by colonial powers – from the Osman Empire to the British and French repression to Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian denial? How to communicate the beauty of one’s own voice when one has never heard it in public?
Sakina Teyna
Salah Ammo
Being a Kurd and using the Kurdish language is highly political and shows self-respect and self-empowerment. Sakina Teyna, a Kurdish singer from Turkey, and Salah Ammo, a Syrian-Kurdish musician, composer and singer, are both aware of this power and are highly engaged in making Kurdish diaspora voices heard. They do this by using techniques that also invite non-Kurdish audiences to anticipate and value musical formats nestled in traditions between jazz and dengbêj. The necessity to read voice and music as an imagined homeland is inscribed in their artistic work as well as in their socio-political engagement.