Ciwan Haco

Ciwan Haco, born in 1957 near Qamişlo in Rojava, is the great modernizer of Kurdish music. From the late 1970s onward he took Kurmancî song out of its purely traditional frame and set it against jazz, rock, funk and pop arrangements, decades before that became common. Living and working in Europe for most of his career, he built a catalogue that made Kurdish music sound contemporary without cutting its roots, and his concerts in the 1990s and 2000s drew enormous diaspora audiences. For many families in the diaspora his albums were the soundtrack of home.