Music like Ciwan Haco

Ciwan Haco (born 1957) is a Kurdish singer. He was born in Tirbespî near Qamişlo in Syria. His grandfather was originally from Mêrdîn, Turkey. After finishing high school, he left for Germany in order to continue his studies. He studied musicology at the Ruhr University Bochum. He is now residing in Sweden.

At the beginning he did not count with the support of his family due to fact at that time only the lower classes played music. But at 14 he released his first album and with 17 he performed for the first time in front of a larger public. Ciwan Haco is one of the first Kurdish singers to combine Kurdish folk music with western style pop music, rock, blues and jazz. In 2003 he received permission for a concert in Batman, which was attended by more than 200,000 people. Ciwan Haco is known for his lyrics that are often purposely simple and to which the main recurrent theme is love, with variations around this same theme. The main song from his last album Off (2006), Li hêviya te (Waiting for you) features vocals in both Kurmanci and French language (the latter being sung by a female vocalist).