At Lankum’s sold-out concert at Cork Opera House last summer, their sharp-suited support act had the crowd in the palm of his bouzouki-strumming hand. It was Kurdish Syrian singer and musician Mohammad Syfkhan, whose debut album I Am Kurdish has become part of a thriving, collaborative music scene in one of Ireland’s smallest counties.
A 57-year-old father of five whose music is a thrilling mix of electrified Kurdish, Arabic and Turkish traditional songs, covers and originals, Syfkhan arrived in Ireland as part of a refugee settlement scheme in December 2016 with his teacher wife, Huda, and young daughter, Noor. “I love music that reminds me of the past,” he writes over email (spoken English interviews are tricky for him, but his written English is expressive and warm). “I usually love music that brings joy because it makes me forget a little of the pain of the past.”
In Syria, music fitted around work. He began learning the bouzouki (a long-necked Anatolian lute) while studying to become a surgical nurse in Aleppo, moving to Raqqa in his mid-20s after he qualified. He then founded the popular Al-Rabie Band, playing festivals, concerts and parties throughout the ensuing decades. Then, in 2011, the Syrian civil war began. Two years later, Raqqa was taken over by the Syrian National Coalition, and then by Islamic State, which murdered one of Syfkhan’s sons, Fadi, a year later.
Syfkhan was told the news by one of the jihadi terrorists, calling on his son’s mobile phone. “When I try to relax, I look at pictures of my children when they were young and try to draw a beautiful future for them,” he writes. Not able to flee Syria together as a large family, his three other older sons found refuge in Germany while Mohammad, Huda and Noor made it to Greece by February 2016. This trio arrived in Ireland 10 months later, housed in Mosney Village, a former Butlin’s holiday camp repurposed as an asylum centre.
Syfkhan played his first gig there a few weeks later. “It was during Christmas and approximately 100 to 150 people attended it. It was nice to see this audience. It was a special and unforgettable party.” Singing was his way of communicating, he says. “I did not speak English well, so music was the language I spoke to everyone because music is the language of the world. It talks about love of all kinds, the love of people for each other, and love of the homeland.”
Seven months later, he settled in a council house in Carrick-on-Shannon in County Leitrim and started introducing himself to other musically minded people. He met Nyahh Records’ Willie Stewart in 2018, who was DJing at a local event celebrating the culture of new international communities in Country Leitrim. Syfkhan asked Stewart if he could plug his bouzouki into his mixing desk so he could play, which filled the room with adults and children doing traditional Syrian and Kurdish dances. “I was both stunned and excited,” Stewart recalls. “I immediately began to start booking him gigs.”
Stewart also runs experimental all-dayers called Hunters Moon with sound artist Natalia Beylis, where Syfkhan watched improvising cellist Eimear Reidy and saxophonist and sound artist Cathal Roche perform. He later asked them to play on his album; Reidy learned about his use of precise glissandi – glides between notes – and the 24-tone Arab tone tuning system, calling their collaboration “intense, musically enriching and joyful”. Concertina artist Cormac Begley, singer-songwriter Ciaran Rock and Alan Woods of the Traditional Music Archive also get mentioned warmly in Syfkhan’s email (“I have met wonderful musicians”).
I Am Kurdish includes luscious covers of 1970s Turkish hit Leylim Ley, Baligh Hamdim’s A Thousand and One Nights and Kurdish songwriter Mihemed Elî Şakir’s gorgeous Put a Coffee in a Glass. The title track, an original with Syfkhan’s deep, husky voice in full flow, is also a highlight. It’s made Stewart reflect on how the Kurds, who now number up to 45 million people worldwide, “have been brutalised and scattered throughout the Middle East and have never had a place to call their own. The fact that Mohammad chose this title for the album has a lot of power behind it.”
Another friend that Syfkhan calls “a brother whom I cherish”, the well-known Irish poet and playwright Vincent Woods, agrees: “I think he really misses the depth of that connection.” Syfkhan, Huda and Noor act in a 2021 film Woods made with choreographer Edwina Guckian, Hunger’s Way/Bealach an Fhéir Ghortaigh, commissioned for the Strokestown international poetry festival. It begins with the Syfkhans walking to the National Famine Museum, where Noor, 11 at the time of filming, does Irish dancing at the door. The film ends with them entering.
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Woods hopes it underlines how displacement continues to be part of Ireland’s history, as “so many displaced people now are coming to Ireland in search of a new home”. He and Syfkhan have also discussed the common ground between Kurdish and Irish cultures. “They both have storytelling at the heart of them and are a key part of a cultural identity that had to struggle to preserve itself.”
“I love these beautiful people,” Syfkhan writes when I ask him specifically about Ireland. “I love music that talks about its cultural heritage, and music that is accompanied by dances, agility and footwork. I thank Ireland, the wonderful country, and the government, for everything they have done to support people.” For the many lives he has already touched, that gratitude flows both ways.