Sung Home. Narrative, Morality, and the Kurdish Nation

Wendelmoet Hamelink, Ph.D. (2014) works at the Centre for Gender Research, University of Oslo. She is an associate editor of the international peer-reviewed Kurdish Studies Journal. As a cultural anthropologist and gender specialist, the main focus of her work has been on cultural politics, music and conflict, oral history, migration and displacement, gendered experiences of genocide, war and violence, women´s movements, minoritized groups in the nation-state, and visuality.

"...an excellent bridge between the Kurdish past and the current state of social reorganization, taking place amid the impact of modernity, artfully discerned from the songs, laments, and stories sung/narrated by the dengbêj. It captures some crucial historical, social, political, and cultural dynamics that have shaped the collective Kurdish experience." Ozan Aksoy in Bustan Vol. 8, No. 2 , 2017.

• List of participating performersList of songs discussedList of figures, maps and tablesList of terms and abbreviationsNotes on language use and translationAcknowledgementsIntroduction i.1 The Sung Home 2i.2 Some notes on the dengbêj art 17i.3 Folklore, nationalism, and (self-)Orientalism in Turkey 31i.4 Narrative and morality 50i.5 Engaged writing 56i.6 Chapter outline 58Part I Songs and Performance Chapter 1. ‘My heart is on fire.’ Singing a Kurdish past. Introduction 631.1The kilams and the corpus 691.2Time, place, and figures1.3 Women and men 731.4 Elite and commoners 861.5 Armenians 901.6 Local leaders in battle songs 961.7 A Kurdish geography: place names and landscape marks1081.8 Kurdish rebels and the Turkish state1111.9 Evdalê Zeynikê: the dengbêj as a figure122Conclusion126Chapter 2. ‘It would disappear in a moment.’ Performing tradition.131Introduction1322.1 The empersonment of Kurdishness1352.2 The Diyarbakır Dengbêj House and its dengbêjs1382.3 Performing the village1452.4 Tribes and battles1542.5 Rebellions and tribes in performance159Conclusion179Part II Life stories 183Chapter 3. ‘A language is a life, and art is a bracelet.’ A landscape of silence. 184Introduction 185Life story 1: Politicization of Kurdish language and culture 191Life story 2: A female dengbêj 201Life story 3: Landlords and support 214Life story 4: Armenian voices 222Life story 5: The religious class 236Life story 6: Turkish experiences 245Life story 7: The prohibition on musical instruments 251Conclusion 262Part III Conflict and Activism 266Chapter 4. ‘Decorate your heart with the voice of the dengbêjs.’ Cultural activism. 267Introduction 2684.1 Kurdish television in Europe 2784.2 Zana Güneş and TV activism 2854.3 The Dengbêj House in Diyarbakır 2914.4 Zeki Barış and activism in the House 2984.5 Individual dengbêjs referring to political narratives 3024.6 Istanbul, a market for dengbêjs 312Conclusion 320Chapter 5. Songs crossing borders: musical memories of a family on the run. 324Introduction 3255.1 Context and history 3315.2 Experiencing borders 3565.3 The embodied experience of singing songs 3655.4 Resignifying cultural memory and redefining the position of women 367Conclusion 377Bibliography 396General index