Qadir Dilan

About Qadir Dilan

Qadir Dilan was a Kurdish composer, violinist and singer from Sulaymaniyah, often described as the first Kurdish musician to blend Western styles with Kurdish song. He was born in Sulaymaniyah around 1930 (sources give 1928 or 1930) into a family of mullahs, poets and maqam singers; his father, Mullah Ahmad Dilan, was a lover of poetry and a maqam specialist, and his older brother was the poet and maqam singer Muhamad Salih Dilan.

In 1948 he founded a music group, which in the 1950s became the Mawlawi music group that he led in Sulaymaniyah. His answer to the search for a modern Kurdish sound was the violin and the ideas of Western music, applied to melodies that kept the phrasing of Sorani song. His best-known songs, Frishta and Jwani Benaw, set poems by Abdulla Goran, the father of modern Sorani poetry. He is also widely credited with the melody of the Newroz song on Piramerd's poem, first sung by his brother in 1948, although some sources name a different composer.

In 1962 he moved to Prague to study music, and he made his life there. He died in Prague on 18 March 1999 and was later reburied in Sulaymaniyah. In 2003 the Dilan Ensemble was founded in Iranian Kurdistan and named in memory of the two brothers.

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