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My Cow Loves Me

Okay, so this one is silly. The original version of this song, which originated among traditional Kurdish communities in Iran, and which I first heard on a Smithsonian Folkways album called “Kurdish Folk Music from Western Iran,” is known on the album as “Gawas: Magna Lawaneh.” The liner notes say, “Gawas are sung while cows are being milked….The call ‘pi pi pi’ is utilized both in the song and separately to cause the cow to remain in place and to stand still during the milking process. The song functions to soothe the cow during milking and the cow is addressed with many affectionate terms, ‘You are dear, you are my life, you are my eyes, etc….'”] Here are the lyrics of All Around This World version–a very loose interpretation:

Pi pi pi my cow loves me, Wow wow wow, I love my cow
Pi pi pi my cow loves me, Wow wow wow, I love my cow
I love my cow I love my cow I love my cow I love my cow
I love my cow, I really love my cow.

Enjoy!

Aynur Inspires You to Join the Resistance

Aynur Doğan is a controversial Kurdish singer from Turkey whose “offense,” in the eyes of some Turks, is that she is Turkish but sings songs in the Kurdish language. Born in 1975 in Cemisgezek, a small town in the southeastern mountains of Turkey, Aynur and her family moved to Istanbul to avoid the struggles in their town between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish resistance. The Turkish government’s loosening restrictions on public use of the Kurdish language in 2004 gave Aynur the opportunity to not only perform but to rise to stardom. She has since been an outspoken advocate for the Kurdish people and their right to make art their own language. In this video Aynur Doğan performs “Keçe Kurdan” (“Kurdish Girl”),” from her album of the same name, which a court in southeastern Turkey banned briefly in 2005, fearing that its lyrics would incite Turkish women to abandon their partners and go to the mountains to join the Kurdish resistance.