Our newest page offers our readers a selection of Armenian songs from Dersim. Specifically, these are songs from Mikail Aslan‘s album "Petag. Armenian Songs from Dersim", released in 2010.
Mikail Aslan was born in Dersim. He grew up in a world where at every step he encountered traces of the Armenians who once lived in the city – ruins of churches, tombstones, and villages whose names had Armenian origins.
Aslan‘s dream was to give voice to these relics of Armenian life in Dersim. As a musician, the best way he could achieve this was by seeking out the songs that Dersim‘s Armenians sang and breathing new life and splendor into them.
Aslan came from a family that belonged to the Alevi community of Dersim, which, as history attests, had co-existed with Armenians for long centuries. For this reason, Armenian music and song were not alien to him. He was well-suited to re-arrange the Armenian music he had collected. The best evidence of this is the fruit of his labors – a total of 12 songs presented on this page.
Each of these songs is also evidence of the great need for collaboration among Kurds, Zazas, Turks, and Armenians in the work of unearthing and discovering the legacy of Ottoman Armenians.
To view the full page, please follow the link below:
https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmamuratulazizharput/sandjak-of-dersim/local-characteristics/song.html
The article was translated into English and Turkish respectively by Simon Beugekian and Sevan Deirmendjian.
We thank Mikail Aslan for his assistance in the preparation of this page. We also thank Movses Der Kevorkian, Cihangir Gündoğdu, and Norair Chahinian for their contributions.
Best wishes,
Houshamadyan Editorial Board
