Tigran was born in Qamishli in northeastern Syria to an Armenian family originally from Diyarbakır.[2][3] Both of his parents were born in villages near the city Diyarbakır.[3] His first Oud he received from his uncle at the age of six.[4] After finishing ninth grade, he concentrated his efforts on learning music and playing Oud[2] and in 1953 he gave his first public concert at the Newroz celebrations.[4] By the age of twenty years, he was singing in four languages: Kurdish, Arabic, Assyrian and Armenian.[2] In 1966 he moved to Yerevan, Armenia, at the time a part of the Soviet Union, where he was employed for eighteen years at Radio Yerevan.[4][5] He left Armenia in 1995 and settled in Athens.[4] He is considered among the best of contemporary Kurdish singers and musicians.[6] He recorded 230 songs in Kurdish, 150 in Arabic, 10 in Syriac, 8 in Greek.[7] In 2009 he was able to visit the villages, where his parents grew up in the Ottoman Empire (present day Turkey), where he was welcomed in Diyarbakır[3] and gave a concert at the Newroz celebrations in Batman.[8]
↑Marchand, Laure; Perrier, Guillaume (2015-04-01). Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. p.180. ISBN9780773597204.
