Kobane

A keening, reedy duduk (oboe) melody emerges out of the wind – a wind that blows free, unhindered across borders. The song coming out of the wind, sung by female vocalist Donya Kamali, is the title-track, a homage to the northern Syrian city under siege from the Islamic State until it was liberated by Kurdish forces in 2015.
Nishtiman is Kurdish for ‘Homeland’ and that, of course, is what this sextet of musicians don’t have, except in their music. They come from the three countries that have a sizeable Kurdish population: Iran, Iraq and Turkey. The pieces here are not political, however, they are contemporary compositions by Sohrab Pournazeri, a player of the bowed kamancheh and plucked tanbur. Most are love songs based on various Kurdish traditions, such as the thrilling ‘Aman Aman’, which goes at a ferocious pace. There is a fierce urgency that runs through the album with opportunities for virtuoso display on kamancheh, santur and dynamic percussion. As with Nishtiman's first album from 2013, there's a track,‘Kohbod’, that draws on the Yarsan or Ahl-e Haqq (People of the Truth) religion of Iranian Kurdistan where the tanbur is a sacred instrument. Powerful stuff.