Fermin Muguruza is a Basque musician, composer, performer. He is one of the founder of the ska punk band Kortatu, active in the '80s. He is also among the founder of another important Basque band, Negu Gorriak.
Today he will be on the stage in Diyarbakır for the Newroz celebrations. Fermin Muguruza has written a very famous song called Newroz back in 1999.
We spoke to him a few days before he landed in Diyarbakır.

What does it mean for you to be in Diyarbakır on Newroz day?

For me this year's tour is very important. I haven't been touring for six years now and I will begin the new tour in Diyarbakir, Amed, in Kurdistan, at the Newroz celebrations. For years I have been singing a song, Newroz, which says: "For you is Newroz, the New Year, for us is the spring, March 21. Is the mayor festivity, we light the fire to honor the sun". After singing this for all years, being finally able to do it before the people to which I dedicated this song, in its own city, in Diyarbakir, on that very day, is very meaningful and emotional for me. As a Basque I also think it is very significant, something representing solidarity. I don't like to say I'm going as a representative of the Basque people, but yes, for sure you are going to see something representing many Basques, when our group will take the stage, and sing in Basque, for the people of Kurdistan. Biji Newroz, Biji Kurdistan!

You have a good relation for many years with Kurds. How did it started?

For many years now I have had a strong relation with the people of Kurdistan but I never been to Kurdistan. Many Kurds though have come to the Basque country, from London, Berlin, and many have been at my concerts and many times, especially after I composed the song Newroz. They had Basque friends and loved this song. And Newroz is a song I wrote in 1999. It was a time were there was still much talk about the massacre of Kurds and Halabja which had been renamed the Kurdish Guernika. So there was a connection there with the Basque city Guernika which had also been bombed like Halabja. Guernika is a symbol of the resistance against the fascism, like many cities in Kurdistan are. I wrote the song, I remember, with the help of Kurdish friends who at the time were living in Baiona and had a kebab shop there: they participated to the song by saying some words in Kurdish. I researched a lot about Kurdistan before writing this song.  At every concert singing this song has always been very strong, emotionally, because the Kurds were at my concerts and they were taking out their flags when I was singing Newroz, and it ended up with Kurds and Basque together, because there are a lot of Basque as well in the diaspora, flying our flag at the concerts, so it was very emotional. Through the music then we created a very nice relation. A Basque journalist and a friend introduced me to a woman working in the cultural department of Diyarbakir municipality. She was interested in having a chat about music in the Basque country, how we produce independent music ourselves. And it was a very interesting and long chat about the importance of music as a symbol of cultural resistance as well. We talked about the language, something very important for me and my generation, because we, who were born in the '60s, were living in an industrial areas where the language was disappearing because of the repression. So my parents were speaking basque, but we didn't. We spoke about rock, the origins of Basque rock groups. And about my first band, Kortatu, which at the beginning was singing in Spanish because as I said we knew no Basque. We learned to speak Basque later. And indeed the generation after ours, that of my children is now Basque-speaking, and it is very interesting to see that my children could speak to their grandparents - my parents - in Basque while I could not which made very difficult for us to establish a relation with our parents in a language we did not speak when we were children. So in a way our children are the connection between us and our fathers as well and ensure that that connection continues. So we were chatting about all this, about hip hop, a music the young people like and that is growing in Kurdistan. We kept the relation and this year I got the invitation to go to Kurdistan and I am very honoured to open my international tour in Diyarbakir. I believe it is a crucial time for the Kurds. Kurdistan had hit the headlines earlier this year with the murders of the three women politicians in Paris, but also with the talks going on. So crucial time for the Kurds but I believe for the Basque people as well because we are undergoing a process which we hope will lead to peace. And we Basque musicians will be in Kurdistan in this important time for both our peoples.

In the past six years you have been working directing documentaries. How did you get the idea of working with video?

I had the idea to do something about the music in Palestine. I was thinking about it since 2007 when I did my last tour. The idea, I must say, came to me after watching this fantastic film which is Crossing the Bridge, by Fatih Akin. A film which was a map of the music of Istanbul. One of the highest points of the film is about Kurdistan and the Kurds, when singer Aynur comes out. It is important for what she says and how she sings it. So for me this film was an important reference when I started working on my documentary on Palestinian music. The result was Checkpoint Rock. The film started to be shown in different festivals and in one of these I met with Al Jazeera people. They offered me to work with them on a series of documentaries about music in some arabic countries. The result was 12 documentaries, Next Music Station, we filmed in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Sudan, Kuwait y Bahrain. I worked almost two years on this project. In Syria I met some Kurdish musicians as well, and it was very interesting because I coincided with the beginning of the revolts in many of these countries, Syria, Tunisia, Egypt. Ben Ali falls, Mubarak falls and at that point my collaboration with Al Jazeera also ends.

Back in the Basque country you did yet another documentary. Can you tell us about it?

Zuloak is the other film I did once back in the Basque country. It is a film half fiction half documentary about a fiction women band which becomes real. This idea actually came to my mind while in Beirut. I realised that one of the issue we most discussed in the tour of arab countries was the role of women in arab society and above all in arab music. Very significant the fact that the two highest and main reference in the arab music are not men, but women, no matter who you ask to, everyone will name Um Khaltoum from egypt and Fairuz from Lebanon. So I was thinking that it would have been interesting, once back in the BAsque country, to deal with this issue with a documentary. As I said I mixed fiction and non fiction to reclaim the contribution of women to music. And I did it adding the more transgressive spirit of punk rock, a language more near to me.

It was a very interesting experiment and has a lot of relation I think with what is going on in Kurdistan as well, where woman always had and still has a crucial role in the political struggle as well as in the cultural promotion. Something in contrast with movements of other countries in the area. It was important for me to see that the whole of the music scene of the Basque country got involved and contributed to the success of this project, with interesting intuitions as well. For example the portal Naiz, promoted by the daily GARA, was looking for original and new contents and it promoted the film through a blog. The film then was screened at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2012 and has been touring the world since: Mexico, Argentine, Lituania, Quebec, Poland, Germany, France.

Although it may seems a very local story, in such a globalised world where neo-liberalism impose us also a cultural omogeneization, questioning yourself about your national identity, both your collective and personal identity makes it a universal issue. From the moment you begin thinking and discussing about in which language to sing, you are discussing about music: the first element in music is indeed language, and every language has an implicit music, a musicality, and when you decide in which language to sing you are not only making a political option - and you are indeed - but you are also making a musical option. All of this is important and relate to everyone, is not local. Thanks to this film we also went to all the underground places in the Basque country, places where a new generation of artists is being born.

The new tour will take you on the road after 6 years of absence.

As far as the new tour is concerned, it took four months to organise such a long tour. Organizing dates, and the logistic of it for a 5 months long tour is a huge work. We would have liked to open the tour in Palestine, because of the previous links, and also because we think it is important to keep Palestine as the first item on the agenda. When this unexpected invitation to play at the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakir came, though, it was for me clear that I had to start from Kurdistan. It was not even an option to think about it, it was already decided ! So we will then go to Palestine, Europe, Quebec, Japan, South America, Australia.

It is going to be a hard tour, something which leave no human in condition to do anything else at the same time ! We will have a cameraman with us, though, shooting away and posting in a Blog in NAIZ day after day what is going on. The idea is also to produce a dvd, maybe around October or November.