Introducing: Mohammad Syfkhan

How do we define our roots, our nationality, something as simple as where we call home? For singer and buzuq player, Mohammad Syfkhan, the question is anything but simple. A Kurdish musician, originally from Syria, his debut solo album, I Am Kurdish, presents a selection of popular and traditional Middle Eastern and North African tunes, as well as his sole original – a proud anthem and the album’s title-track. Yet, since 2016, he’s been firmly based in Ireland. The album was recorded in County Wicklow and, alongside Syfkhan’s strident vocals and urgent buzuq, features guest musicians, saxophonist Cathal Roche from County Sligo and Cork-based cellist Eimear Reidy.

Syfkhan’s long, arduous journey to this joyous cultural crossover began at the turn of the 1980s when he started playing music while studying nursing. After graduating in 1983, he moved to the city of Raqqa, Syria, began performing professionally and formed his own group, the Al-Rabie Band. This outfit, which he says included “a buzuk, a guitar, a keyboard, a drum and a tabla,” became extremely popular, performing at parties, weddings and festivals all over Syria, playing a mix of popular Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and Western songs, and some of Syfkhan’s originals.

However, Syfkhan’s happy life as a musician and surgical nurse came crashing down when war broke out in Syria in 2011 and his life was visited by intense sorrow and trauma. After one of his sons was murdered by ISIS, he and his family, fearing for their lives, had no choice but to leave their home behind. “I fled from Syria to Turkey,” he tells me, “and we rode rubber boats, called death boats, to Greece. I stayed in Greece for two months, after which we moved to Ireland through the mediation of the UN.” While three of Syfkhan’s sons were resettled in Germany, he began a new life in Ireland with his wife and young daughter.

“My English was about five per cent, so music was my primary language,” he recalls. Taking every opportunity he could to perform music at private parties and concerts, Syfkhan soon came to the attention of Ireland’s open-eared underground folk community. In fact, one of the first people he met after arriving in Ireland was Cormac MacDiarmada, fiddle player with Dublin’s contemporary folk darlings Lankum. “I have gotten to know a lot of musicians here in Ireland,” Syfkhan says. “I love them all. Musicians in Ireland are wonderful people. There is no distinction between where you are from or what your language is. The most important thing is that you are a person with a beautiful soul and your music is beautiful.”

In 2023, Syfkhan performed for his biggest audience yet, opening for Lankum at a sold-out show at the Cork Opera House. With the release in February of I Am Kurdish on the County Leitrim-based DIY label Nyahh Records – followed the same month by his first ever UK live performance at The Rose Hill in Brighton – he looks set to win many more fans.

This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Songlines today