Kurdish Lyrical Protest: The Terrain of Acoustic Migration

Abstract

There is a dearth of literature on the diasporic performance and circulation of Kurdish music. In response, this article foregrounds the thematic of acoustic memory and migration in the production of a performative ethnographic documentary about the exiled Kurdish singer and composer, Muhamed Abbas Bahram, one of many accomplished Kurdish musicians residing in Western Europe. The title of the documentary, Silent Song, alludes to a poem written in 1976 by a Kurdish radio and television broadcaster, commemorating the musician's refusal to perform in a concert at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad before an audience of Ba'ath party members. Drawing on multi-sited visual ethnographic research integral to the production of Silent Song, the poem's subsequent translation into a musical score by Abbas Bahram is documented. The musician's resistant act is re-enacted for the purpose of the film on an Edinburgh stage, raising questions surrounding the re-construction of an historical event within a filmic present. This article highlights the position of the diasporic Kurdish musician as both social actor and performer in the context of the documentary's reflexive use of broadcast, satellite and electronically mediated communication technologies, characteristic of an evolving Kurdish public sphere.

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