Friday 17 July 2026, 7.30pm
The “Women's Voices: Kurdish Sound Archive and Beyond” festival offers two immersive evenings at Cafe OTO dedicated to Kurdish sonic memory, archival storytelling, and live performance. On July 17th, the focus is on rare historical recordings of women’s voices from across Kurdistan, with a panel discussion and sound exhibition led by Zeyneb Yas Salam and her team, followed by live performances that creatively reinterpret the traditional dengbêj style. On July 18th, the spotlight shifts to contemporary Kurdish home archives from London, with a panel exploring diaspora sound culture and a collaborative live performance responding to these intimate recordings. Each night blends archival listening, thoughtful dialogue, and innovative music-making, inviting audiences to experience the vibrancy and resilience of Kurdish women’s voices past and present. Exclusive Kurdish music merchandise will be available on both evenings.
PROGRAMME – 17/07/2026
Historical Women’s Voices from Kurdistan
7:30: Door Open
8:00: Panel Discussion & Sound Exhibition: 30 archival recordings of Kurdish women’s voices from 1905–2000, representing Bakur, Rojhalat, Bashur, and Rojava, curated by Zeyneb Yas Salam and her team from the Amed Museum. Discussion on the archival process, the significance of women’s oral traditions, and the challenges of preservation.
9:00: Break
9:15: Live Performance: Suna Alan
09:45: Break
10:00: Live Performance: Heja Netrik presents a contemporary reflection on Dengbêj reinterpreting the archival material.
Zeynep Yaş Salam, born in Siirt, is a Kurdish music researcher and archivist who has dedicated her career to preserving oral culture and Kurdish musical heritage, especially women’s contributions. After her family’s migration to Istanbul post-1980, she began documenting Kurdish oral traditions in 1991. A graduate of Marmara University, she conducted influential research on women in Kurdish culture, collaborating internationally and compiling anthologies, music albums, and catalogues of Kurdish artists. Her works include the publication of “ŞAKARÊN MUZÎKA KURDÎ,” studies on Kurdish female vocalists, and numerous articles. Since 2012, she has served as the founder and curator of the Diyarbakır City Museum, continuing her efforts in cultural preservation and archiving.
https://www.instagram.com/zeynebyash
Siavash Namehshiri is a Zurich-based Kurdish composer, sound artist, collaborator, curator, and community organiser. His work explores artistic creation as an evolving dialogue, using sound and noise to channel memories and challenge monolingual artistic narratives.
Engaging in contextual and interdisciplinary collaborations, he works with Field recordings, samples, synthesisers, vocals and experimental sound techniques across radio, film, theatre, and live performances. He is also an early member of MigrArt, a platform centred on facilitating artistic exchange and production among artists who have experienced racism.
“Deng” means “sound” and “bêj” means “to tell” in Kurdish. “Dengbêj” is a traditional singer-storyteller who goes from village to village to perform Klam, meaning the word in Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish — yet only in Kurdish, also a song.
Hêja Netirk, a native of Kurdistan now living in exile, reimagines this tradition in a new space. Connecting to the roots with cables. She is the Dengbêj in the Disco.
Moment is an experimental, free-improvisational duo by Hardi Kurda and Khabat Abas. The duo focuses on the moment when sounds emerge through interaction, reflection, reaction, and interruption. Hardi and Khabat aim to share their experience of sound-making with the audience and to explore a world of sounds and noises from East to West.
Links: hardikurda.com and khabatabas.com
Link to the album: https://space21.bandcamp.com/album/broken-resonance
Dr. Hardi Kurda is a sound artist, improviser, and researcher with a PhD in Music from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the founder of SPACE21, a platform for sound art and experimental music in Slemani, and Archive Khanah, an interactive sound archive project inspired by the philosophy of computer gaming, featuring coloured cassettes and recorded sounds from Kurdistan and Iraq.
Hardi's work explores radio noise and sonic traces often considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, or forgotten — sounds without a place or destination. He developed the concept of “The Found Score”, which is an Urgent Listening method that navigates attention toward non-auditory senses. His listening’s approach rooted in his personal experience of migration and crisis during an illegal journey to Europe.
Khabat Abas (2026 fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme) is an experimental cellist, improviser, and composer from Iraqi Kurdistan. She moves freely between artistic discipline and possibilities. Her works are inspired by a broad collection of methods, including noise, improvisation, and narrative storytelling as individual approaches. Therefore, she searches for unheard sounds or undiscovered spaces. Khabat is probably best known for her adapted cello and improvisational work exploring extended techniques, through which she started developing pieces that respond to the objects that are surrounding her or to her childhood memories. In her practice, she raises questions about what is out of bounds, raising the possibilities of sounds that cannot be controlled – in contrast to traditional musical values.
Suna Alan is a Kurdish Alevi singer based in London, whose artistry is deeply rooted in traditional Kurdish dengbêj (bard) music and shaped by the rich cultural diversity of her upbringing in Izmir, Turkey. While Kurdish folk songs are her primary focus, her repertoire extends to encompass Armenian, Greek, Arabic, Sephardic, and Turkish music.
Recognized for her contributions to music and culture, Suna was featured in the UK-based creative journalism platform Brush & Bow’s Women Role Models Project in 2018. She has graced prestigious stages such as the Southbank Centre, as part of the "Women in Music" concert series, and the Royal Albert Hall, performing with the Solidarity Ensemble to support earthquake survivors in Turkey and Syria.
In August 2024, she was the sole performer at the TEDxKings Parade St event in Cambridge, themed "TRANSFORMED." Her involvement with SOAS University’s Kurdish Band and Rebetiko Band has further broadened her international presence, allowing her to perform in numerous concerts and festivals across the UK and beyond.
Suna’s music is a celebration of heritage, resilience, and the shared humanity that transcends cultural boundaries.
https://www.youtube.com/sunaalan12
