Paper Short Abstract:

This paper critically examines the degree to which a co-produced, arts-based ethnography challenged hegemonic structures in knowledge and cultural production. The reflections focus on the creation of a song- and storybook which foregrounds Kurdish women and their engagement across national, gendered, and artistic boundaries.

Paper Abstract:

This paper reflects on the process of publishing 'Kurdische Musikerinnen in Deutschland: A Song-and Storybook'. The work weaves together different genres of writing and media to produce a multivocal expression of what it means to be a Kurdish woman in Germany’s musical landscape. Co-producing this knowledge in literary and musical forms explored the possibilities and challenges of postcolonial, feminist ethnographic writing practice.

The book consists of three components: an autobiographical account of singer and activist Sheyda Ghavami, short informational texts presenting ethnographic insights on gender and Kurdish artistic production, and 14 musical works contributed by our interlocutors. We presented the musical repertoire through multiple mediations: sheet music notation, transliterated texts, and audio recordings of the spoken texts and music performed by our interlocutors. This mosaic of first-hand story-telling, ethnographic theory, and artistic representation preserves individual voices and allows conflicting interpretations to sit side-by-side.

This kaleidoscopic form suited the content. As one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state, Kurds constantly redefine their multiple belongings beyond national borders. Kurdish cultural production similarly works across generic and national boundaries (Schäfers 2022). Co-production and arts-based methods offer the possibility to ethically explore these life stories, especially in contexts of displacement and diasporic exchange. These approaches seek to dissolve the subject-object divide and foreground polyphony, challenging epistemological hierarchies of what counts as “knowledge”. Nevertheless, our process of ‘translating women’s lives’ (Behar 1993) brought to the surface forces of racialisation, patriarchy, and economic precarity that were not so easily dismantled.