Kurdish musician Kayhan Kalhor wins Grammy with Silk Road Ensemble

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Yo Yo Ma’s Sing Me Home album, which won the Grammy for Best World Music this year, also featured renowned Kurdish musician Kayhan Kalhor.

 

The world famous international Silk Road Ensemble, initiated by the Chinese American cellist Yo Yo Ma, brings together dozens of musicians of different cultures from around the world.

 

Kalhor, a native of the Kurdish city of Kermanshah in Iran who is now based in the United States, began performing music in his early childhood.

 

According to Billboard’s biography, he is more known for his original work.

 

“Kayhan Kalhor is a composer of Kurdish and Persian classical music and well known as a member of the Persian/Kurdish folk and classical ensemble Ghazal and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. He is also a virtuoso on the kamancheh, setar, and Persian violin. He is globally renowned for his original works, his interpretations of traditional music, and his collaborations with other classical and modern musicians.”

 

Kalhor collaborated with the New York-based Brooklyn Rider string quartet on the album Silent City in 2008.

 

“The title track [Silent City] is a Kalhor composition originally featured on Yo-Yo Ma’s New Impossibilities,” according to the World Village Music, “and introduces the theme of life’s continued renewal in the face of destruction, whether by humankind or by the forces of nature.”

 

Silent City is an elegy for the Kurdish city of Halabja, which the Saddam regime attacked with chemical weapons in 1988.