AS SWEET AS A WATERMELON AND AS STRONG AS DEMITASSE OF COFFEE AT MID-AFTERNOON

Çiğdem Aslan was born in Istanbul into a Kurdish-Alevi family of Sivas and lived in a heavily leftist neighbourhood of Istanbul named Nurtepe, attending middle school in the elitist neighbourhood of Nisantasi and then high school in the heavily Armenian, non-Muslim populated neighbourhood of Kurtulus. She has now lived in London for almost two decades, having moved there after deciding to study music in England. So, can she still be considered to be a Kurdish-Alevi musician? Or, to pose it differently, what are the criteria for defining someone’s relationship with his/her racial and ethnic group?