Tahsin Taha

About Tahsin Taha

Tahsin Taha was a Kurdish singer and composer from Amedi (Amadiya) in the Badinan region of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and one of the defining voices of Badini (Kurmanji) song in the twentieth century. He was born Tahsin Muhammad Salim Taha in 1941. Because his father was a government official, the family moved between towns in Badinan, and he went to school in places including Mangesh, Duhok and Zakho before continuing his studies in Mosul and Baghdad.

He recorded his first song, Eşkere Nakim, for Radio Baghdad in 1958, and went on to study at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. Politically engaged, he joined the Kurdish movement of the 1960s and was imprisoned in Baghdad for a time. He later worked as a music teacher in Makhmur and Erbil, and from 1970 sang regularly for the Kurdish service of Baghdad radio and television. His songs drew on Kurdish folk melody and national feeling, and among the best known are Aso and Ey Felek.

In 1994 he travelled to the Netherlands, where he fell ill, and he died there in May 1995. As he had wished, his body was brought back to Kurdistan and buried in his hometown of Amedi. He is remembered as one of the great Kurmanji voices of his era, and his recordings remain central to the musical identity of Badinan.

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