Dengbêj Reso

Dengbêj Reso is remembered as the master’s master of the Serhed school: the singer whom the great twentieth-century dengbêjs themselves named as their teacher and measure. His art stood for the strict, unornamented core of the tradition: breath control, text clarity and emotional restraint that lets the kilam itself do the work. Recordings of Reso are fewer and rougher than those of his famous successors, which has only deepened his standing among connoisseurs: his is the voice specialists cite when they explain what dengbêjî is.