Kurdish poet and singer-songwriter Şivan Perwer was born İsmail Aygün on
December 23, 1955, in Virasenhir, Turkey. He was exposed to Kurdish music from a
very young age and quickly learned to play the tembûr, a fretted string
instrument widely used in traditional music. Şivan Perwer rose to fame during
the Kurdish protests against Iraqi rule in 1972. Since a large part of his
catalog addressed the oppression of the Kurdish people in the Middle East, his
homemade recordings were banned in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, and were often
smuggled across borders. Following an arrest warrant ...