Why do we have differing musical preferences? What is the inspiration behind Kurdish music's melody and rhythm? The brethren of purity provided an explanation approximately a thousand years ago:
You should know, dear brother, may God aid you and us with a spirit of His, that bodies have temperaments of many kinds, and that animals have natures of many types, and that each temperament and nature has a melody which corresponds to it and a rhythm which matches it. Their number is uncountable, except to God Almighty. The demonstration of the truth of what we have said and the accuracy of what we have described is that you will find, on reflection, that each people has rhythms and melodies which it enjoys and takes delight in, while others do not enjoy them, and only they take delight in them, such as the songs [ghina'] of the Daylamīs, Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Africans, Persians, Byzantines, and other peoples with different languages, natures, habits, and customs. Similarly, you will also find within any single one of these nations groups of people who enjoy particular rhythms and melodies which delight their souls while others neither enjoy them nor take delight in them. Again, you may also sometimes find an individual who at a certain moment will delight in a song and take pleasure in it, but at another will not and may indeed sometimes dislike it and suffer upon hearing it. You will find people similarly disposed with regard to food, drink, scents, clothes, and other matters of pleasure, adornment, and beauty, all according to changes of temperament, differences of nature and bodily constitution, and conditions of place and time, as we have partially explained in the epistle on the humours.
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