Women in Anatolia have marked deaths and sad events for hundreds of years by performing laments, a type of melodic poem transferred from generation to generation through a longstanding oral tradition.

Kurdish researcher Bese Aslan has spent eight years gathering Kurdish-Alevi laments in her hometown, Kahramanmaraş, in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Her comprehensive work was recently released by Kalan Music under the title “Kurdish-Alevi Laments.”

While preparing the album, Aslan, 28, visited funeral homes, enshrouded dead bodies and dug graves. “The mourning voices on the album are from real life without editing,” she told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “The concept of death was unknown to me before doing this research. I have witnessed the death of some relatives and had very bad times psychologically but continued recording with determination.”

According to Aslan, traditional laments are a form of poetry, a “form performed through improvisation and transferred from generation to generation,” typically by women. “Laments also reveal the nature of men and women,” she added. “Mostly women perform them; they are about giving birth and about loss.”

Custom dictates that the host of a funeral should perform a good lament and make attendees cry. “Bad performances are odd,” said Aslan, adding that the lamenting culture has begun to disappear due to immigration. “Kurds and Alevis who have immigrated to different parts of the world from Anatolia have forgotten how to lament.”

Aslan shared a memory with the Daily News about her work on the project. “My research had just finished and been released as a CD, and then a person died,” she said. “His relatives came from abroad and nobody in the funeral home knew how to lament. I began to play the CD and women cried. When the lament ended, they kissed me but I was not the one who performed it.”

Listening to recordings over and over again

“I not only gathered laments but also shared the pain [of the mourners],” said Aslan, explaining that she helped wash the dead, dig graves and enshroud corpses. Beginning her research at the age of 20 affected her psychologically, she said. “I could have gathered voices only but I wanted to be a part of the pain; otherwise I would not have been able to make such a detailed work,” she said. “While working on this album, I realized the fact that everyone rehearses for their own death.”

The fact that she did not speak Kurdish during the first years of her research created many difficulties for Aslan. “But I did not give up; I gathered laments while learning Kurdish,” she said. “Since I did not have an academic education, I received support from academics and Kurdish-speaking people while gathering laments.”

Aslan listened to each recording over and over again before including it on the album. “All the recordings are improvisations; they were performed without preparation,” she said. “This is why I could have made mistakes while deciphering them. I had to have command of all the words.”

In addition to laments, Aslan also gathered Kurdish-Alevi tales and researched the clergy and idioms in Alevism.

Book in three languages

The cover photo of the CD shows a woman with deep wrinkles on her face. “The woman did not know I was taking the photo,” Aslan said. “I am not a professional photographer, but a very impressive photo appeared. Her wrinkles are like the reflection of her life experiences.”

The laments are accompanied by a comprehensive book in three languages, Turkish, English and Kurdish