The Invention of a Tradition: Diyarbakır’s Dengbêj Project

Scalbert-Yücel, Clémence

doi:10.4000/ejts.4055

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Similar concerns motivated Perihan, Fadime, and several other women I worked with to enlist my help in committing their oral repertoires to writing (Schäfers 2017). In addition, Kurdish-run municipalities and cultural centers have opened a number of so-called “ dengbêj houses” ( Malên Dengbêjan ) (Scalbert-Yücel 2009) meant to revitalize and preserve the art. Such initiatives and institutions tend to frame dengbêjs as living embodiments of a precious Kurdish heritage, which becomes a readily consumable commodity when dengbêjs are put on display on television shows, festival stages, or in concert halls.…”

Section: Valorizing Kurdish Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Archived Voices, Acoustic Traces, and the Reverberations of Kurdish History in Modern Turkey

Schäfers

2019

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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This article investigates how middle-aged to elderly Kurdish women in Turkey engage with large collections of Kurdish music recordings in their possession. Framing them as archives, women mobilize these collections as central elements in a larger, ongoing Kurdish project of historical critique, which seeks to resist hegemonic state narratives that have long denied and marginalized Kurdish voices. While recognizing the critical intervention such archives make, the article contends that, to be heard as “history” with a legitimate claim to authority, subaltern voices often have to rely on the very hegemonic forms, genres, and discourses they set out to challenge. This means that subaltern projects of historical critique walk a fine line between critique and complicity, an insight that nuances narratives that would approach subaltern voices predominantly from a perspective of resistance. At the same time, this article argues that a more complete picture of subaltern archives requires us to attend to the voices they contain not just as metaphors for resistance or political representation but also as acoustic objects that have social effects because of the way they sound. By outlining the affective qualities that voice recordings held for the Kurdish women who archived them, the article shows how their collections participated in carving out specific, gendered subject positions as well as forging a broader Kurdish sociality. Paying attention to history's “acoustic register” (Hunt 2008), this suggests, promises to open up perspectives on subaltern historiography that go beyond binary frameworks of resistance and domination, critique and complicity.

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Section: Valorizing Kurdish Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Archived Voices, Acoustic Traces, and the Reverberations of Kurdish History in Modern Turkey

Schäfers

2019

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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“…Dengbêj is a Kurdish compound word consisting of deng (voice), and bêj (to tell). If you add the suffix -i‖ dengbêji, we have -the man whose voice relates.‖ Kemal says that the -dengbêji is a man who recites epics in a professional way‖ (Scalbert-Yücel, 2009). Roger Lescot, the first Western scholar to research Kurdish oral literature defines dengbêji as follows:…”

Section: Traditional Music and Songsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burden of Colonialism and Alienation in Modern Kurdish Novel

Abdulkarim

2019

International Journal of Kurdish Studies

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Focusing on the impact of colonialism and how its forces are reflected in the modern Kurdish novel, it becomes apparent that such forces are still greatly at work in Middle Eastern regions with Kurdish populations. It is apparent that sophisticated physical, cultural, and economic means are implemented in an ongoing process that denigrates stability, prosperity, and peace. Moreover, on closer examination, it becomes clear that colonialism has a fourfold effect: Firstly, colonialism causes internal displacement, as illustrated in the two recent novels by Iraqi Kurdish writer Gharbi Mustafa entitled When Mountains Weep: Coming of Age in Kurdistan, and What Comes with the Dust Goes with the Wind. Secondly, it prompts an inner psychological conflict, which experience is illustrated in the novel Dawiya Şervanekî [The End of a Warrior], an earlier novel by Ismet Badal, Also, an Iraqi Kurdish writer. Thirdly, it arouses a thirst for the traditional and serves as a spur to the quest for traditionsa narrative of the novel Hüyükteki Nar Ağacı [The Pomegranate on the Knoll] by Yashar Kemal, also a Turkish-Kurdish writer. Fourthly, it is apparent that the above dominant narratives in Kurdish modern novels have triggered a response among the Kurdish populations.

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“…The Kurdish political movement that emerged in Turkey over the course of the 1970s, by contrast, was much less enthralled with the oral traditions of singer-poets who had formed an integral element of Kurdish feudal and tribal society. Staunchly socialist, the movement regarded dengbêjs largely as symbols of the old order that the Kurdish people ought to overcome in the name of both social and political revolution (Scalbert-Yücel, 2009). The movement's cultural politics consequently encouraged protest music combining elements of Western rock music, socialist marches and Anatolian folk music rather than elderly men and women chanting (hi)stories of tribal warfare, blood feuds, and elopements (Aksoy, 2006;Blum and Hassanpour, 1996).…”

Section: Fantasies Of Homogeneity: Dengbêjs and Kurdish Cultural Heritagementioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing Connections: Kurdish Women Singers and the Ambiguities of Owning Oral Tradition

Schäfers¹

2019

Diversity and Contact Among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia

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The Invention of a Tradition: Diyarbakır’s Dengbêj Project

Cited by 20 publications

References 7 publications

Archived Voices, Acoustic Traces, and the Reverberations of Kurdish History in Modern Turkey

Archived Voices, Acoustic Traces, and the Reverberations of Kurdish History in Modern Turkey

Burden of Colonialism and Alienation in Modern Kurdish Novel

Tracing Connections: Kurdish Women Singers and the Ambiguities of Owning Oral Tradition

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