The Yazidis have kept their music alive despite it all

Last Thursday, I found myself in the presence of grace and resilience, the kind of which one rarely has the privilege of experiencing. A group of young Yazidi women, many of whom had been captured, tortured and kept as sex slaves by Isil since they were mere children, were performing traditional Yazidi music and dancing at the House of Lords.

Yazidis believe that when God created Man, “Adam only gained his soul once he had played a musical instrument”. Michael Bochmann, the veteran British musician and violin virtuoso, was explaining the importance of music in Yazidi faith. Small wonder, then, that the so-called Islamic State, not content with the genocide and mass enslavement of Yazidi people, were intent on destroying their music as well – ensuring the destruction of the soul of a people.

AMAR Foundation is a charity founded by Baroness Nicholson, which has worked with Yazidis in displacement camps in Iraq since 2014. The charity, under the musical leadership of Mr Bochmann, is endeavouring to provide support and strength to these women through the camaraderie of the AMAR choir, bringing the community together in the preservation and celebration of their music – religious, ceremonial and folk.

One of the singers, Renas, was a child herself when she was raped repeatedly and impregnated by Isil “warriors”. She gave birth to a baby girl and, already separated from her family, she and her daughter were sold to other Isil terrorists, who raped and tortured her so monstrously that she conceived and lost two more babies before she could give birth. Her family were finally able to buy her back by paying an extortionate sum to people smugglers after three years of hell. In a final blow of vile inhumanity, Isil kept her daughter.

As Renas and her choirmates – each with traumatic tales of their own – held hands and gently swayed to the music of the shebab (a flute) and the daf (a frame drum), I watched in awe, trying and failing miserably to make sense of a world which juxtaposes the serene beauty of the performance, and the inconceivable horrors which its participants had had to endure.

Nearly six years after Isil massacred and enslaved thousands of Yazidis, this relatively small, historically persecuted religious minority community appears to pop in and out of the world’s conscience. Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria could jeopardise the hard-earned victory (which American airstrikes helped secure in the first place, so the critics of Western involvement can hardly claim moral high ground) over Isil in the region, leaving Yazidis, Christians and other minorities particularly vulnerable to further attacks.

Renas returned last week with her friends to an Iraqi displacement camp with no employment opportunities and little prospect of ever returning to the remnants of her home in Shingal – still “a battleground”, as she describes it, with no security, no future and no hope.

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