“Kurdish Mothers as Artists and Peaceful Revolutionaries against Genocide through The Singing of Lullabies”

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Theme:
Motherhood and Revolution: How women, and mothers in particular, are innovating in conflict and post conflict circumstances, and expanding the models for ways in which one is an artist/activist in the world.
Translated of songs and poem by Cklara Moradian
Kurdish cradle modeled by: Mr. Rasoul M

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“Kurdish Mothers as Artists and Peaceful Revolutionaries against Genocide through
The Singing of Lullabies”
By: Soraya Fallah
I am going to attempt to make a claim. This claim is that the Kurdish mother, not just as an individual, but as a collective entity, has played a crucial role in the perseverance of the Kurdish identity, specifically in implanting language and culture in her infant. Kurdish mothers, do this in many ways of course. I will be examining the role of songs, such as folkloric lullabies, and how they help endow the Kurdish language, culture, and identity as a whole. Knowing historical context on Kurdish question is very important in shedding light on why the Kurds have had to rely on oral history, in the form of folkloric songs and epic poems to instill their culture and forbid it from the eradication desired by external forces.
The Kurdish mother is highlighted here, not just as a group of individual mothers who have often faced the premature death of their children but do not perish themselves. They are not just seen as a collection of individual women who lose husbands to war and gendercidal campaigns but continue to remain functional.
The Kurdish mother is examined here as a collective force. Kurdish mothers are seen as the key to the preservation of the Kurdish identity. For the Kurdish people the “mother tongue,” takes on a literal meaning.

What you see in front of you is a model of a typical Kurdish cradle.

Paint and design by Rasoul Mirzapoor

(Clothes, doll, and cradle interior Design by Soraya Fallah)






(Lyrics for the lullaby Written in Kurdish by Soraya Fallah
Translation to English by Cklara Moradian