"tevlihev" is a musical project which takes start with the idea that music is one of the most fundamental factors forming a basis for the cultures of the people and societies. Taking the musical history into consideration, it can be argued that music is maybe the greatest tool used to express the pains, sorrows, loves, joys, truimphs, defeats, shortly all kinds of feelings and experiences of human life… 

music has been used sometimes for the seek for justice, sometimes for the struggles against unfairness, sometimes for the victories achieved. Music has always showed its effects on the minds and thoughts of people, their decisions, their perceptions of life and their actions. In a sense, music has a magnificent power on human life. 

tevlihev, as a musical project, is mainly focused on the music of northern mesopotamia. So, what are the components of the northern mesopotamian music?
All the cultures and societies of northern mesopotamia have a deep-rooted history. These cultures and societies consist of, inter alia, kurds, amenians, assyrians and yezidis. The common point for these cultures and societies is that, all of them have been living on their homelands for a long time, and they have often become subject to oppression in terms of identity and cultural freedom. These oppressions still exist today. 

These societies have often became derived of their fundamental rights and have been forced to live in a limited freedom. For that reason, these societies have faced obstacles in every aspect of life, in art, in personal development and in science and they had to become weak in these areas. These obstacles and weaknesses have caused the grand cultural acquis of these ancient societies of mesopotamia to become devoid of the opportunites for being transferred to the forecoming generations, become deformed and forgotten… 

As tevlihev, we are handling this subject in terms of music and carrying out our efforts on the platform of music. We came together to evoke the musical maerilas and melodies of our ancestors, to help them to not be forgotten and to revive the brilliant melodies of mesopotamia again with a fresh new spirit. 

And while performing these pieces and melodies, we are making a musical synthesis by blending them with western sounds and musical forms without giving any harm to the original authentic substances of the melodies and pieces. And this lets us to expand these substances form the local to the universal. We can name our project as “north mesopotamia folk blues-flamenco project”. Themes of the melodies and pieces we perform are various. Some of them are the songs esulting from experienced social sorrows, some of them are love pieces reflecting the authentic rituals of the region, and some of them are banned songs which had caused their performers to face with legal penalties and exiles. 

We play our songs by kurdish-zaza-armenian-syriac languages...

TEVLİHEV project

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