Tomorrow Saturday at 7.30 p.m., Casa Árabe is celebrating the Newroz festival, in collaboration with the Representation in Spain of the Government of Kurdistan-Iraq, with a performance by the Kurdish folk music group Arami Roh.
The Newroz festival is one of the most important festivals in Kurdish culture and is celebrated with games, dances, music, family gatherings, preparation of special meals and poetry readings. On the eve of Newroz, bonfires and torches are lit in the Kurdistan Region. The fire symbolises the end of winter darkness and the rebirth of light and fertility in spring. The Newroz festival, which is celebrated on the day of the spring equinox, symbolises the arrival of the new year according to the Persian calendar.
Newroz is a festival of pre-Islamic origin that has been celebrated in the Middle East for at least 3,000 years and is strongly rooted in the rituals and traditions of Zoroastrianism. Today, the festival of Newroz is celebrated by the Kurds and in many former territories of the Persian Empire such as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in other Central Asian countries.
The group Arami Roh, originally from the city of Koysinjaq in Iraqi Kurdistan, known for being the birthplace of important poets and artists, was created in 2015 by eight members who perform a fusion of Eastern and Western instruments such as banjo, flute, guitar, santur, saz, daf and percussion instruments, with which they develop a repertoire of melodies of classical Kurdish folklore that are often fused with contemporary music.
