AMAR’s Yazidi Choir. Can you hear the people sing?

In 2019, Rana founded the AMAR Ashti Choir and is being supported by the AMAR Foundation, a British based charity. Several women in the choir were ISIS captives and others have lost family members. 

“This folk music, it’s also a kind of affiliation of our religion,” says Mamou Othman, who studies music as psychotherapy at the University of Dohuk. “There are special songs that only the Yazidis sing.” 

Yazidi music is thought to be between 5,000 and 7,000 years old. However, it has never been written down or recorded. The AMAR International Charitable Foundation has since made over 100 recordings in northern Iraq. Some were produced at Lalish, the 4,000-year-old spiritual home of the Yazidi. 

The choir has performed in the U.K and AMAR has also recorded Yazidi folk songs and sacred religious music, and given these recordings to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library to archive for future generations. 

For further information on AMAR’s work with the Yazidi community, please contact the AMAR Foundation by e-mail or call 0207 799 2217. You can also make a donation to the Yazidi choir through the AMAR Foundation.