Dilshad Said

About Dilshad Said

Dilshad Said (also spelled Dalshad Said) is a Kurdish composer, violinist and conductor from Duhok, known as a bridge between Kurdish folk music and Western classical music. He was born in Duhok in 1958 and graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1977. He then played violin in the Baghdad radio and television orchestra and worked as an assistant to its conductor.

In 1979 he founded a music group in Duhok that set Kurdish folk melodies in Western forms. He went on to study in Britain and earned a master's degree from the University of Wales in 1988. In 1991 he settled in Austria, where he has taught music and violin ever since. In 2018 the Mozarteum University in Salzburg awarded him a doctorate for research on Kurmanji Kurdish music, including the rhythms of the govend and dilan dances.

Said's major works include the symphonic compositions Peshmerga and Shingal (2015), written after the ISIS assault on the Yazidis of Sinjar and performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. He also wrote full scores of the Kurdish anthem Ey Reqîb for military band and symphony orchestra. His recordings of Kurdish melodies for violin, and his concerts in Kurdistan, Turkey and Europe, have made him one of the best-known Kurdish names in concert music. In 2016 the Duhok governorate named a park after him.

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