Nashville has the largest Kurdish population of any city in the United States, and most are from the Iraqi region of Kurdistan. They arrived in waves starting in the 1970s, and later in the 1980s and 1990s after Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaigns. Since the coronavirus pandemic, there’s been an uptick in Kurds coming to the United States from Turkey. And many end up in Nashville, where they know there’s already a large community. WPLN’s Rose Gilbert reports on how they are influencing the city’s world-famous music scene.
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