The smoky gatherings of winter nights warmed by wood-fired tea; rooftops under starry skies with songs rising freely; the benches of village schools; the cold cells of Van prison; the forest paths of escape after the 1980 coup in Turkey; the stages of the Netherlands — across all these settings, Hozan Brader’s voice has carried pain, memory, and resistance, rising like a Kurdish ballad of freedom across time and borders.

Brader is not a classically trained musical artist. He is the son of a modest village in Mardin, nurtured by his father’s songs, shaped by early national awareness, scarred by prison and exile, and refined by a lifetime of pursuit. With age, his voice only deepened, like wine maturing with time.

He sang, composed, acted, and created for the Kurdish cultural movement without ever losing the childlike purity that began with a small flute known as a duduk, which he once traded for a pair of shoes. In a long conversation with Kurdistan Chronicle, Brader recounted his story with candor.

Inspiration from the night

From a young age, Brader’s nights were filled with gatherings and the vibrant vocals of Kurdish villagers.

“My father’s gatherings were alive every night,” Brader recalls, his tone steady and deep. “In winter, the fire burned until dawn with an endless pot of tea above it. Villagers brought wood, sugar, and tea. I would sit until the end while my brothers slept. Some elders told me to go to bed. But my father would say, ‘Leave him. He is buying now, and one day he will sell.’”

By this, his father meant that the child was absorbing stories and songs that would serve him later. His father often sang for his friends, told anecdotes, and recalled his service in the Ottoman army in Kirkuk. These evenings became Brader’s first school, a place where stories and music intertwined.

A childhood of hardship and starry songs

“Life was harsh, but not without innocent joys,” Brader says of his early years. He remembers roaming the hills, picking herbs, acorns, and flowers, and shaping stones into marbles to play with. At night, rooftops became beds, and the stars an audience. “I would gaze at the sky and songs would well up. I sang whatever came to mind. My uncle discouraged me, but my father said, ‘Let the boy sing.”

His father’s repertoire included “Sheikh Zirav,” about Sheikh Mahmoud’s revolt against the British, and a song by the legendary Kawis Agha condemning the traitors. “The man who handed Sheikh Mahmoud to the British was Kurdish,” Brader explains, “Kawis Agha must have meant him specifically.”

The flute for a shoe

Music entered his life through barter. “Before school, I traded my plastic shoes with a peddler for a duduk. That was my entry into music.”

The 1970s brought a wave of Kurdish national awakening. Students played a vital role, inheriting the legacy of Musa Anter and the movements of 1949 in Diyarbakir. The September Revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan also influenced this generation. On his family’s wall hung the portrait of Margaret George Shello, the Assyrian peshmerga fighter. People often mistook her for Leyla Qasim, but Brader later learned her true identity.

Between classical and folk

In school concerts, Brader sang Turkish songs of Yunus Emre and Dawud Solari. “One teacher said my voice belonged to classical singing; another insisted folk was my home. I was caught between them,” he admits.

By the age of sixteen, he was head of the school broadcast and even organized a cultural fair with music, theater performances, and a library. Yet activism carried risks. Eight classmates were exiled, and police nearly arrested him before his older brother intervened.

Later in Van, his mother returned from the hajj (pilgrimage) with a tape recorder. Brader recorded himself playing the tanbur, rehearsing the songs of Sivan Perwer, Ciwan Haco, Ferit Uzun, and Aram Tigran. “I never liked imitating anyone,” he says, “I wanted to sing like my father.” Yet he found deep inspiration from Ashik Mahsuni Sherif, Ashik Ahmed, and Zamani.

Music behind bars

In 1976, before turning eighteen, Brader was arrested. For four months in Van prison, interrogators pressed him about “Welat Kaniya Zeraye” (Homeland, the Golden Spring), a forbidden song from Western Kurdistan (northern Syria) popularized by Muhammad Sheikho. “We listened to it on secret cassettes. I first heard Sheikho’s voice in 1977.”

Brader asked his family to bring him a tanbur in prison. The political winds shifted when Bulent Ecevit became prime minister, easing restrictions and ethnocentric tensions in Turkey. “Every Sunday, I performed for 3,000 prisoners.”

After his release, schools refused to re-admit him. He played one last farewell by the river, then returned to Mardin. The arrest and exile had cost him five difficult years.

Exile and diaspora

In 1979, Brader went to Konya to continue his studies but abandoned them after fascist attacks and repeated arrests. The 1980 coup turned him into a fugitive. “I worked in forests, never sleeping at home, because many friends were jailed in Diyarbakir on charges of separatism or communism.”

He later connected with the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Van, where peshmerga fighters often came for treatment. In the house of his uncle Omar, Brader found comrades and sang alongside Omar’s daughter.

Exile eventually brought him to Europe, where his voice became part of the Kurdish diaspora’s memory. For over four decades, Brader has sung, composed, and acted. Asked about love, he reflects: “Love is a small word with great meaning. It is the awakening of feelings – between people, or between man and nature. Pure love, without aim or gain. When love becomes lust, it loses its meaning.”

Singing and acting, an everlasting talent

Few know that Brader also acts. His first major film, in 1996, told the story of Kurdish refugee children. Since then, he has appeared in several Dutch and Kurdish productions. Most recently, he was offered a role in a short Dutch film by a Kurdish producer.

From the duduk he bartered with his shoes, to the prison concerts in Van and the theaters of Holland, the events of Brader’s life are connected by a single thread: a refusal to let his people’s voice be silenced. His songs are memory, resistance, and beauty at once. As he closes his story, the echoes linger like distant bells, reminding that art born of hardship can outlast the iron bars of prison and the weight of exile.

Jan Dost is a prolific Kurdish poet, writer and translator. He has published several novels and translated a number of Kurdish literary masterpieces.