by Ruth Hazleton

This song was written for Nûdem Durak, a Kurdish musician sentenced to nineteen years’ imprisonment in Turkey for teaching young people traditional song and dance. The song also references the feminist Kurdish female fighters of the Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (YPJ) who play a fundamental role in military operations in the region. 

Durak is just one of many Kurdish artists who have been imprisoned in recent years, and this song is my contribution to the Song for Nûdem Durak campaign.

http://www.ruthhazleton.com.au/

Composed in 2018.

Lyrics

Verse 1

Black the night, I am bound

A silent bird in a foreign cage

March of men, the bells are ringing

Poets shackled in iron chains

Verse 2

Hush child and halt your singing

Dark eyes turn to the ground

Whispers of truths, deceiving

Ghosts, echoes and chanting crowds

CHORUS

Rivers and mountains, sickle moon, snow

Shackle the dancers; an ancestor’s woe

Militant daughters and absent her sons

A mother is grieving, the damage is done

Verse 3

Murmurs of a thousand voices

Song the needle that weaves the thread

Weave and spin the ancient stories

Word for which your daughters bled

Verse 4

The mother tongue of stateless pilgrims

Threaten the pillars of prison walls

Guards lay siege to the songs of children

Fettered by thieves as darkness falls

CHORUS

Rivers and mountains, sickle moon, snow

Shackle the dancers; an ancestor’s woe

Militant daughters and absent her sons

A mother is grieving, the damage is done

Rivers and mountains, sickle moon, snow

Shackle the dancers; an ancestor’s woe

A militant daughter not silent by choice

They can shackle my body

But never my voice