Ayşe Şan (1938–1996) was a Kurdish

Kurdish people

The Kurdish people, or Kurds , are an Iranian people native to the Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...

 singer born in Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır

Diyarbakır is one of the largest cities in southeastern Turkey...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. She is considered as one of the most influential voices in contemporary Kurdish music. Her father was a traditional Kurdish singer or dengbêj. Aysha began singing at local events in 1958. After an unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Gaziantep

Gaziantep

Gaziantep , Ottoman Turkish: Ayintab) previously and still informally called Antep; ʻayn tāb is a city in southeast Turkey and amongst the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. The city is located 185 kilometres northeast of Adana and 127 kilometres by road north of Aleppo, Syria...

, where she began recording Turkish songs for the local radio station. She moved to Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

 in 1960 and recorded her first album in Kurdish

Kurdish language

Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....

. In 1979, she paid a visit to Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...

 where she met with many Kurdish musicians and singers such as Mihemed Arif Cizîrî and Tahsin Taha. From 1980s onwards, she settled in Izmir

Izmir

Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...

and worked in a local post office until her death in 1996 due to cancer.