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Photos, L to R: Zaidee Stavely from Radio Bilingüe interviews Özden Öztoprak and Isık Berfin at the Bayview Opera House (Credit: DeShawn Davis); Özden Öztoprak, a master musician of classical Turkish music, rehearses (Credit: Lily Kharrazi/ACTA); Isık Berfin rehearses with the hand drum, or daf (Credit: Lily Kharrazi/ACTA); the duo during an interview at KALW, FM radio (Credit: Lily Kharrazi/ACTA); an interview with a PRI reporter (Credit: Lily Kharrazi/ACTA); and during concert day preparation (Credit: Sonia Narang/ACTA).
Özden Öztoprak and Işık Berfin are a mother-daughter duo from Turkey’s ethnic minority Kurdish Alevi community, which has historically suffered persecution for their practices. Their distinct Kurdish- and Zaza-language repertoire of songs stems from a Sufi spiritual tradition that has been passed down behind closed doors. Living here means new freedoms to sing and to bring light to their history.
Filmed by Jon and Joanne Ching on April 29, 2018.
“We don’t have a lot of freedom of speech in Turkey, so we try expressing our emotions and what we go through through music. And I feel like music is the thing that lets you live on forever. It lives on forever.”
- Işık Berfin