Kurdish tembur player, singer and guitarist, Ali Doğan Gönültaş, was born in Kiğı, Eastern Anatolia, an area where memory is stored in music and poetry bearing witness to the rhythms and languages of this once multi-ethnically inhabited region and its turbulent history, encompassing the Armenian genocide, the suppression of Kurdish culture and the Alevi religion. A graduate of Kocaeli University in both archaeology and communications, Ali Doğan Gönültaş started his professional music career in 2007 with the band Ze Tijê, at the same time beginning his oral history and field research, which eventually led to the 2022 album Kiğı, a personal journey through 150 years of music consisting of songs of lamentation, love and hope in the regional languages of Kurmancî, Kırdaskî, Armenian, Turkish and his mother tongue Zazakî, and dance tunes performed with passionate virtuosity.