Kurdish poet and singer-songwriter Şivan Perwer was born İsmail Aygün on December 23, 1955, in Virasenhir, Turkey. He was exposed to Kurdish music from a very young age and quickly learned to play the tembûr, a fretted string instrument widely used in traditional music. Şivan Perwer rose to fame during the Kurdish protests against Iraqi rule in 1972. Since a large part of his catalog addressed the oppression of the Kurdish people in the Middle East, his homemade recordings were banned in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, and were often smuggled across borders. Following an arrest warrant against him by the Turkish authorities, he fled the country in 1976 and settled in Germany, where he made his first professional studio recordings. After 37 years in exile and releasing over thirty albums, music videos, and documentaries, Şivan Perwer finally returned to Turkey in 2013. Some of his most popular titles include Ey Ferat (1976), Gelê Min Rabe (1982), Agirî (1983), and Naze (1986), which featured the track "Cihan," one of the most well-known songs. In 2022, a remix of "Cihan" entered the Turkish Top 200 at Number 91.
