Aynur

Aynur Doğan, who often goes by her first name alone, is a Kurdish singer whose catalog is a mixture of her own compositions and traditional folk songs, primarily in Kurdish. She has a powerful voice that allows her to express complex emotions across any language barrier, which can be quite an experience for the uninitiated. Her songs are elegiac, pastoral, and haunting at times, though always with her sense of national identity at their core. She uses traditional Anatolian instrumentation for the most part, and plays the bağlama herself. That said, she has also been regularly incorporating western sounds and styles in her arrangements especially since she left her native Turkey in 2010 and relocated to Amsterdam partly to be able to sing in her language more freely.