Mezher Xaliqî

Mezher Xaliqî, born in 1938 in Sine, is the dean of classical Kurdish song from Rojhilat and one of its most important institutional guardians. His singing carries the courtly, maqam-rooted style of the Sine tradition; his life’s second work has been preservation, above all through the Kurdish Heritage Institute he founded in Silêmanî, which archives recordings, instruments and oral tradition. Few figures join performance and preservation at this level: he is at once a classical voice and the reason many older voices survive at all.