Prominent Kurdish singer dies of COVID-19 complications
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Prominent Kurdish singer Jaafar Hassan died in Erbil on Monday due to complications from COVID-19, according to the Iraqi Artists Syndicate.
Hassan was a Kurdish singer and composer born in Diyala’s Khanaqin district in 1944. In the music industry since 1958, he became a pioneer of Iraqi political songs, later becoming a regular fixture on television and radio in the mid-1960s and 1970s.
A graduate of the Fine Arts Institute in Baghdad, Hassan sang in English, Arabic, and Kurdish, and founded the Institute for Liberal Music Studies in Baghdad in 1967.
“Hassan was one of the revolutionary artists who came from a deep-rooted Kurdish family and fought against injustice during the Baath regime,” Erbil’s Director of Culture and Arts, Farhank Ghafour, told Rudaw on Monday.
Hassan was a member of the Iraqi Communist Party and left Iraq to Yemen during the Baath regime's suppression of communists in the late 1970s. Hassan returned to Iraq in 2004 and lived in the Kurdistan Region capital of Erbil until his death.