The Legend

Renowned Kurdish singer Hasan Zirak was mesmerising listeners with his songs, first as a young boy, nicknamed Zirak for being ‘a clever boy’, then later at work, or entertaining gatherings and parties. Spending large part of his unstable life in exile, he eventually embarked on a career as a professional singer, becoming one of the legends of Kurdish music. Zirak was an improviser, often composing his own lyrics and adopting traditional folk songs, or singing popular poems, adjusting and adding his words to them. His rich, sensual melodies and heart-warming vocals resonated with generations of Kurdish listeners and inspired other singers, resulting in numerous covers over the years. Zirak was born in the countryside of the Iranian Kurdish town of Bokan in 1921, but after the death of his father, he left home to find work elsewhere. Soon he became an eternal migrant, and he was to spend most of his life on the move, travelling through cities and villages. At age fifteen, he moved to Tabriz, then Tehran before leaving for Iraq, where he lived in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. Soon he moved again, this time to Baghdad, where after being spotted singing at a hotel, Zirak was introduced to the Kurdish broadcasting of Radio Baghdad, and thus began his professional singing career in 1953. A few years later, Zirak returned to Iran to perform on the country’s prestigious broadcastings of Radio Tehran and Radio Kermanshah. Zirak became a style and singing tradition all of his own, and his music gained even more notoriety after his death in 1972 in his hometown Bokan. He was buried on the city’s Nalashkena hill, fulfilling his long-cherished wish. The songs on this vinyl represent part of his golden era. At that time most of the recordings were made ad home on reel-to-reel tape recorders, such as the songs recorded by Ahmad Faraj at the house of Mahmood Tofiq Shelek in February 1967, with musicians Hazem Hadad (Oud), Anwar Qaradakhy (Violin), Shawkat Rashid (Daf & Znjar), Salah Rashid (Shimshal), Azola (Tapil), and Mam Hasan (Balaban). This release is one of the various recordings that existed.