Sakina was born into a Kurdish Alevite family in the small town of Varto in Turkey. As a teenager she started singing with Turkish choirs and bands, but it wasn’t until she entered university that she became acquainted with Kurdish musical traditions and set out to defy cultural assimilation. In 1991 she joined the Mespotamian Cultural Centre in Istanbul, a proponent of Kurdish culture, as a vocalist. Like many other Kurdish musicians, she was forced to literally go underground to practise her music and soon she had to choose political activism over art.

It wasn’t until Sakina arrived to Austria as a political refugee in 2006 that she took to singing as a full-time pursuit again. The first fruit of her concentrated creative efforts were released in the form of her first solo album ROYÊ MI, globally distributed by ARC Music.

Sakina joined forces with pianist Nazê Îşxan and violinist Nurê Dilovanî to form the all-female TRIO MARA, drawing on traditional Kurdish songs mainly sung by and handed down from woman to woman, enrichening the material with Western classical and contemporary approaches. In 2013 the trio released their first album DERI / BEHIND THE DOORS, recorded live at the Rudolf Ötker Hall in Bielefeld. The album was distributed by AHENK MÜZIK and earned the trio a wider acknowledgement. They were included in the portfolio of the Secretary of Culture of North-Rhine Westfalia and publicly commissioned to tour a number of venues in the region.

Since 2013 Sakina works with another group, the ANADOLU QUARTETT, touring Austria and Germany. Their first tour is successfully documented in the form of the live album KÖPRÜ/THE BRIDGE (Ahenk Müzik), a recording that reached a large audience and garnered the group critical recognition.

On top of all that, Sakina has established the Vienna-based ensemble “Sakina & Friends” featuring musicians from Iran, Spain, Austria and Turkey. They regularly perform throughout Austria, where Sakina appears on a lot of album projects and concert bills, never tired to support other artists.

Performances

Welt Nacht Festival – Bielefeld (GER)

Sommerblut Festival – Cologne (GER)

Volksbühne – Roten Salon – Berlin (GER)

Katakomben Theater – Essen (GER)

Domicil – Dortmund (GER)

Ballhaus Naunynstraße– Berlin (GER)

ATZE Musiktheater – Berlin (GER)

Komische Oper – Berlin (GER)

Theater an der Ruhr – Mülheim an der Ruhr (GER)

Morgenland Festival – Osnabrück (GER)

İmago Dei Festival – Krems (AUT)

Akkordeon Festival – Vinenna (AUT)

Sargfabrik – Vienna (AUT)

Porgy & Bess – Vienna (AUT)

Les Peuples d’Anatolie en fête aux grottes -. Geneva (CH)