SATURDAY MAY 9 – 8 PM

Eyşe Şan (1938–1996) was one of the most powerful female dengbêj in Kurdish music—a voice that carried and reshaped collective memory. Among Kurds, she is remembered as a “queen without a crown or a throne,” for she spoke not from palaces, but from exile, grief, and resistance.

Her life unfolded at the intersection of patriarchy and state oppression. In a world where singing was deemed “shameful” and “sinful,” she was forced into marriage and ostracized; yet she never relinquished her voice. Persecuted for singing in Kurdish, she was torn from her homeland and pushed into a life of exile stretching from Germany to Baghdad. In this sense, her very existence was an act of defiance: taking the stage as a woman in a male-dominated dengbêj tradition, carving out space with her voice, and enduring.

Join us for a discussion on voice, exile and collective memory at La Zone together with KASED, a Women’s Culture, Art and Literature Association based in Diyarbakir.