Kurdish musician, vocalist, and composer Ayfer Düzdaş was born in 1973 in Koçgiri, Sivas, a region with a deep Kizilbaş Alevi culture. Her family escaped from Dersim to Erzîngan during the 1938 massacre, and relocated to Sivas. Later, when she was nine years old, her family moved to Istanbul.
Ayfer Düzdaş embarked on her musical career in 1998 when she started her education in violin and voice at Pera Fine Arts High School. Notably, in 1997, she was a part of the Venge sodiri music group, creating songs in the Zazaki Kurdish dialect. Subsequently, in 1998, she joined the 11-woman strong ensemble, Koma Asmin, which performed at various stages across Turkey and internationally.
Her vocal talents were also featured in two TV movies, “Şıx Senem” by Mazlum Çimen and “Esir Kalpler” with the music composed by Nail Yurtsever. Furthermore, Ayfer Düzdaş contributed her voice to three albums of traditional Kurdish folk songs, namely Şahiya Stranan-1 in 2000, Şahiya Stranan -2 in 2004, and Şahîya Stranan-3 in 2011.
In 2001, she embraced the Kirmanjî Kurdish dialect, a language spoken in various regions of Anatolia and other parts of the Middle East, in the album Wayir, featuring folk melodies. In 2006, she released the album Anatolian Lullabies, where she sang a lullaby in the Kurdish Sorani dialect. This album, curated by Melih Duygulu and released by Kalan Music, highlighted lullabies from diverse cultural communities within Turkey, each with its own language.
Her solo career took flight in 2008 with the release of her debut album, Leylan. In 2012, she undertook the remarkable endeavor of recording and collecting lamentations from the Koçgiri region, a significant tradition within the Kızılbaş Alevi culture, ultimately transforming these expressions into an album.
The year 2017 witnessed the release of the album Kurdish Alevi Melodies from Horasan to Çorum, a compilation of Ayfer Düzdaş’s work in regions with a significant presence of Kurdish Alevis.
In 2022, she rolled out the album Kilomên Arxawûnê in Kurdish, a project that saw her traverse villages in Malatya’s districts, including Arguvan, Yazıhan, Hekimhan, and Akçadağ, to create a beautiful set of songs.
Author: Douglas Sanders
