Same our stories are insane but yours won’t be the same Same our stories are insane but your sons and yours will change
BABA بابا Is written with Nashville Hall Of fame writer Sharon Vaughn.
Produced with @jeppeengelbrecht .
🎥 by @oliverreinmann
I’m honestly overwhelmed by all the support I’m getting. My first single ‘Windabu’ from my upcoming EP ‘Personal Subjects’ drops in less than 6 hours, and before a new chapter begins for me, my team, and my family, I just want to say thank you for all the love you’re sending my way. I’ve been preparing for this moment for 4 years. It’s surreal to be standing here. Trillion thanks.
Love,
Rewan
📸 @mortenfroeslev
BABA بابا IS FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE DIASPORA.
FOR THE ONES RAISED BETWEEN TWO WORLDS,
CARRYING STORIES THEY NEVER HAD WORDS FOR.
Writing BABA بابا taught me:
the Kurdish diaspora isn’t just history.
It’s inheritance.
It lives and hides in our nervous system.
The way we smile
The way we meet
The way we see people
The way we survive
The way we love
But it’s also where change begins
I had many melodies
Chord progressions
Compositions
But the words from my motherland
kept slipping between two cultural identities:
Danish
Kurdish
They never fully landed
Some words belonged to the mountains
Some to the Danish hills
Some belonged nowhere
Then I met Sharon
She is not just a co-writer
She is a therapist with a pen
She listened
To the silence
To the fragments
To the weight I carried without even knowing it
Side by side
we shaped the song, acoustic, on piano
Kurdish emotion
English expression
A heart raised between two homes
She helped me speak what my family never could
She helped me change and heal my nervous system
Somewhere in that process
the story opened
Not pain
But understanding
Not fear
But voice
Not inheritance
But transformation
BABA بابا became more than a song
It healed
It released
It rewrote
And after all of this
for the children of the diaspora
for the parents who carried them
for everyone raised between two worlds
and who carries stories untold.
You are a success. You are seen. You are heard. You are powerful.
BABA بابا IS YOURS NOW
📸 by @mortenfroeslev
IF YOU WERE RAISED ON STORIES FROM PLACES YOU’VE NEVER SEEN OR BEEN, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
I still remember the day I asked my daye ( my mother )
about their refugee story.
From the beautiful Kurdish mountains
to green, vivid, and welcoming Denmark,
I had asked for years,
over and over again,
only ever receiving silence
or a downward glance.
She said.
He won’t talk about it, Mama.
Our stories are insane.
But yours won’t be the same.
Our stories are insane,
but your sons’ and yours will change.
For the first time, she told me his story,
but only in broken fragments.
Your Baba,
she said,
he’s a child of the Sun.
A man shaped by mountains.
By silence.
By the kind of strength that grows
in the shadows
of things he will never speak about.
He was sitting in the room, quiet.
Listening.
As if the walls themselves were keeping secrets.
She spoke of the journey that brought them here.
The nights of uncertainty.
The moments of fear.
The small sparks of hope
that kept them moving forward.
BABA’s بابا song became that conversation.
That fragile bridge between past and present.
Where the Kurdish diaspora speaks
through whispers.
Through pauses.
Through memories carried further than any map.
In that moment, I realized something.
This is more than a story.
It’s a path we walk too. The new generation.
Born between lands.
Carrying our roots.
While shaping our own future.
I never traveled the mountains she described.
Someday I will.
To visit.
To try.
To reckon with them.
I never slept under the tents my BABA بابا ones called home.
Yet through her words, I felt the wind.
The fear.
The hope.
As if those places lived somewhere inside me too.
And as we. You and I. Carry these stories forward,
we remember that our parents’ memories
are our compass
and our nervous system.
Their survival
becomes our beginning.
And their past
is the soil
from which we grow.
The foundation
where we build
our future.
In the end,
your BABA بابا and my BABA بابا
laid the first bricks
and carried us here.
Thank you, BABA بابا
Dest xoş, BABA بابا
BABA بابا is for all of us.
Carrying pieces.
Of a broken diaspora.
A story we never fully understood.
BABA بابا is for the children.
Who became.
Or are becoming.
Successes on their own.
BABA بابا is for those of us.
Who started ten steps behind the line.
BABA بابا is for the refugee kids in the school garden.
When nobody believed in us.
But that didn’t stop us.
BABA بابا is for the next generation.
The children who will start ten steps ahead.
We are here now.
It’s our turn.
BABA بابا is for you.
Placing the last missing pieces.
From your parents’ past.
Building your own version.
Your own circle.
Your own story.
Your own future.
Your BABA بابا is rooting for you.
FOR THE CHILDREN OF REFUGEES, WHO MADE A WAY WHEN THERE WAS NONE.
BABA بابا lyrics
Guy bidin vê çîrokê
Guh bidin vê dîrokê
Guh bidin çîroka xwe
Her ewe dîroka we
My Baba he’s a child of the Sun He was taught by the gun Can’t forget My Baba, he xwest his bride (asked for the hand of his bride) Both of them cried to the mountains
I talked with my daye ( mother ) She said Your Baba don’t like to talk about the drama Ev çend salin em bi hevre ( all these years we have been together ) Yadê ( Mother in different dialect ) There are secrets He won’t talk about it, Mama ( Middle East expression of ‘Mamas son’ )
He’s your Baba, Baba Your father, father Baba, Baba, Father dear Our stories are insane But yours won’t be the same
He’s your Baba, Baba The perfect refugee Your father, father Jiyanek you won’t believe ( a life you won’t belive ) Baba, Baba, Father dear Our stories are insane But yours won’t be the same
Your Baba is a child of the Sun He defined everyone When he left Your Baba he was breaking their hearts But the answer lay far to the west Now Baba has a pregnant wife My sister inside Feeling the same They knew they had to flee the land they loved best
Same our stories are insane but yours won’t be the same Same our stories are insane but your sons and yours will change
Vaye bavê te
Ezim bavê te bavê te
Baba Baba Bapîr
Our stories are insane but yours won’t be the same
Written with Nashville Hall Of Fame writer, Sharon Vaughn.
Thanks to @kodakultur .
Vaye bavê te
Ezim bavê te bavê te
Baba Baba Bapîr
Here is your father
It’s me your father, it’s me your father
Father, father
Grandfather
🎥 @oliverreinmann
Hevalno, I’m in shock.
The love & support I’ve received on BABA بابا has completely blown me away.
Every message, call, & kind word has lifted me up more than you know. Thank you all. I never take your energy from you for granted.
1.000.000.000 thanks for letting me share my story & for being part of my journey. Gelek supas
To be honest with you, I’m very proud of my BABA’s journey.
That’s why BABA بابا came to life. It is, in my opinion, the best song I’ve ever written.
I’m proud of how a Kurdish refugee of the diaspora, who carried more loss than words could hold, kept it a secret for 70 years, and to this day still managed to raise me and my siblings with strength, dignity, values, and love.
Our parents raised us between two cultures, teaching us to hold on to our roots while reaching for a future they never had. That’s why I call him ‘The Perfect Refugee’.
If I can reframe my story, you can too. Remember, we are the children of refugees who made a way when there was none.
