Kurdish artist Aynur wins WOMEX 2021 Artist Award
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdish vocalist, songwriter, and instrumentalist Aynur Doğan won the international WOMEX 2021 Artist Award, she tweeted Friday.
“I am extremely honored to receive this recognition and deeply pleased to receive the prestigious WOMEX 2021 Artist Award,” Doğan said.
The WOMEX Awards, also known as World Music Expo Award, is an established prize first introduced in 1999 to honor world music on an international level.
“It is for her long-term dedication to the preservation and innovation of Kurdish and Alevi culture, for maintaining the highest artistic integrity in the face of political pressure and, in doing so, for being a model for all that sing against the silencers,” the world music expo said in a press statement.
“Music is the key to lost cultures, the way to return to the source, to the essence. It is proof that we are different but come from the same core. Therefore, every different tone in this world is the legacy of all of us – it’s like not letting a piece of earth slip away,” the release quoted Aynur Doğan as saying.
“One of the most important steps of my musical journey started with WOMEX in 2006…It is an honor for me to represent the music of 40 million people whose existence is not yet recognized and does not have a country,” she added.
“I am honored to dedicate this award to all women in the world in the presence of Kurdish women who are fighting for freedom, equality and peace.”
Dogan, 46, was born in the Kurdish province of Dersim (Tunceli) in a region of Turkey Kurds refer to as Northern Kurdistan, or Bakur.
She left her home area and fled to Istanbul in 1992 to escape fighting between the Turkish army and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In 2002, she released her first album.
Over the years Aynur has become one of the most well-known musicians from Turkey and a representative for the Kurdish people, her official biography says.
A Turkish court banned one of her songs, Keça Kurdan (the daughter of Kurds), in 2005 on the grounds it incited Kurdish women to fight in the mountains, thus serving “terrorist propaganda.” The ban has since been lifted.
Her music is based on traditional Kurdish folk songs, with many of them being at least 300 years old, her website says. Her lyrics are about the life and sufferings of Kurdish people and in particular Kurdish women.
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She has performed all over the world and received several international awards.