When the best-Irish-albums-of-2024 lists are written in December, high up on them should be a thrilling debut record by a Kurdish Syrian refugee, released on a tiny independent label. The story of Mohammad Syfkhan is a remarkable one – and the exhilarating fruits of his friendship with Willie Stewart, of Nyahh Records in Co Leitrim, highlight the benefits to Irish music of collaboration and diversity.
When The Irish Times catches up with Syfkhan (via email, as it’s the easiest way for him to communicate in English) and Stewart, they’re celebrating the “incredible and really, really heartwarming” reaction to the album, I Am Kurdish. “Out of all the releases I’ve done on the label, this one has sold the most to Irish people, which is really nice to see,” says Stewart, who is also a member of the band Woven Skull. He and Syfkhan first met in 2018, at a cultural event at the Dock arts centre in Carrick-on-Shannon. “Mohammad just walked in with his bouzouki and walked up to me and said, ‘Where do I plug in?’” Stewart says. “He just started playing, and I was completely floored by it.”
Music helped the men bond beyond any language differences. “He helped me without knowing me or hearing me, and when he heard me the friendship [began],” says Syfkhan. “As it was completed [we] became brothers.”
Syfkhan’s style is dabke, a style of folk dance, popular in the Middle East, that’s groovy and rhythmic. (Just try not to start moving when you listen to I Am Kurdish.) As well as the bouzouki, he plays another traditional instrument, the saz. His record features a mix of folkloric tracks and classic songs such as One Thousand and One Nights, all from the Middle East and north Africa.
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The album was recorded across two sessions in Leitrim and Wicklow, with Syfkhan selecting the musicians Eimear Reidy and Cathal Roche to play alongside him. It was engineered so that it could be played at nightclubs and listened to at home.
The high-energy title track, an original song, speaks to Syfkhan’s story. He, his wife, Huda, and their five children lived in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where he worked as a surgical nurse and played music on the side with the Al-Rabie Band. The family fled the country, making the perilous journey to Europe, after the horrifying killing of one of their sons by Islamic State. (Kurdish people are stateless and suffer from persecution in Syria as well as in Turkey, Iraq and Iran.)
Three of their sons settled in Germany; Mohammad and Huda, after arriving in Ireland in 2016, were resettled with their young daughter in Leitrim. “The source of my inspiration is my suffering that I experienced with the loss of my son, my escape from my country and taking risks,” says Syfkhan. “I tried to gather my strength and write, play and sing … Music comes from pain, from love, from suffering, from happiness.”
Syfkhan’s basic English makes it hard for him to find work, but his music has enabled him to make new connections: he has collaborated with the fiddler Martin Hayes and the concertina player Cormac Begley, and he supported Lankum at Cork Opera House last year. “I benefited from their musical information, the way they play and sing, their traditional dances, and their special music,” says Syfkhan. “They gave me their knowledge with all love and respect.”
Every country has its own traditions, heritage and history, but the Irish public has taste
— Mohammad Syfkhan
The reaction to I Am Kurdish has been bigger than either man anticipated. Overnight, Syfkhan went from playing “pretty small gigs” to being asked to play festivals across Europe. “I think [his] story explains to a lot of people what’s actually happening within the Muslim world,” says Stewart. “People have strange, close-minded ideas about what Islam is.” Syfkhan speaks out about the dangers of fundamentalism, and within his catchy, ecstatic music is a message about collaboration, love and peace.
I Am Kurdish comes at a time when Ireland is experiencing troubling flashpoints around immigration, with fires being set at buildings earmarked for asylum seekers. “To have an opportunity to bring an artist like Mohammad into the Irish music scene is really important,” says Stewart. “I won’t say that it’s a form of activism, but at the same time I have an opportunity to do this and I will do it, because my stance would be very pro-immigration and very, very anti-fascist. So to me that’s a big motivator as well, aside from the music being really gorgeous.”
What does Syfkhan think of Ireland? “Every country has its own traditions, heritage and history, but the Irish public has taste,” he says. “It loves music of all kinds. It is not restricted to one country or another.” He likens Ireland “to a beautiful garden in which flowers from all countries have gathered”.
“I would love to see Mohammad play The Late Late Show and just be treated as another Irish musician,” says Stewart, “as opposed to othering him or making him seem more exotic than he is – because he has an Irish passport; he’s an Irish citizen.”
Syfkhan remains thankful to Ireland for the chance to resettle and make music here. “It is my duty to offer this beautiful country everything I can. I wrote and composed a song called I Love You Ireland,” he says. “I will record it and sing it soon.”
I Am Kurdish is released by Nyahh Records
