Ahmet Aslan is a Zaza singer-musician of exquisite depth and poetry. He plays guitar, tembur, cura and baglama and sings in Turkish and Zazaki. His work is unique, sounding both within the tradition at the same time as being completely individual.
Baba Zula - the only garage-folk, dub-happening band in Anatolia, and pretty much the only Anatolian band who do their own thing with ne’r a glance at what’s in and what’s out - either at home or abroad - abroad, where they’re just as at home as at home. Abroad also as a state of mind, musical nomads collecting inspirations like magpies on heat. Loving tradition while spurning the pieties of purism. There’s a new album 'Gece Condo' - their 7th - with roots which reach in every direction and the only direction which matters being their own. They make you laugh and cry (often at the same time), they make you dance and trance. The dervish spirit cannot be found in the tourist tekkes, and most of the minstrels of old Anatolia hung up their baglamas long ago, but in Baba Zula the dervish spirit is alive and kicking, and the baglamas and darbukas are charged with joy. Baba Zula, Abba Zaba Zula. As Beefheart was to the Blues, Baba Zula are to the ashiks, the mystic troubadours, of deep Anatolia. The way to join Earth and Heaven is through music, is to uncurl your arms and whirl...
As two of the greatest masters of Turkish folk music, renowned both at home and abroad, Erkan Oğur & İsmail Hakkı Demircioğlu have been singing together the traditional songs of Anatolia since 1998. With their gently exquisite style, they have created a unique and acclaimed way of performing this delicate music, both timeless and sublime.
Based in Istanbul, the five-piece Gevende (multiple vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, viola, e-bow, ümbüş, melodika, haydar bass guitar, drums and trumpet) freely and wildly combine music from Anatolian tradition with a distinctly indian sub-continental inspiration which makes for a shimmeringly colorful music of joy and celebration. On stage they improvise without boundaries and draw, magpie-like, on all the music genres and cultures they love.
This trio of Fahir Atakoglu (piano), Horacio El Negro Hernandez (drums) & Anthony Jackson (bass) is a clash of titans. Fahir Atakoglu is one of Turkey's foremost composers and musicians. Fahir’s composing ability shines here and seperates the album from similar trio albums, there’s no filler on this album and no clichéd jazz tracks. The album is a masterpiece piano jazz trio album with hints of pop-jazz on some tracks, and including many Anatolian classical motifs, complex time signatures, all made accessible by virtue of considerable talent. Music to appeal not only to jazz lovers but to all kinds of lovers of classy instrumental music.
Hüsnü Şenlendirici comes from a Roma family rooted deeply in musical culture. He has his band, Laço Tayfa, which collaborated with Brooklyn Funk Essentials, to record the album 'In the Buzzbag'. Şenlendirici made two other albums with them before releasing a solo album 'The Joy of the Clarinet' which was a Turkish best-seller. He collaborated with Ismail Tunçbilek ( baglama) and Aytaç Doğan (qanun)to make the world music classic album 'Taksim Trio'. His new album is 'On Both Sides of the Aegean' with Trio Chios.
Istanbul Sessions is a unit consisting of four exceptionally versatile musicians -- İlhan Erşahin, Alp Ersönmez, Turgut Bekoglu and İzzet Kızıl. The concept of the band is a combination of İlhan's New York/ Nublu sound mixed with the sounds and spirits of pulsating Istanbul. It’s a band which mixes Turkish scales, clubby beats and jazz improvisations. Their live sets are a web of sounds, moods, and almost trance-like vibes. Almost as if they were DJ's, they keep the audience on their feet with beats, colours and songs weaving in and out until their set ends some happy hours later.
Starting life as a performing folk music club at Bosphorus University, Kardeş Türküler have become the best contemporary folk band in Turkey. With usually more than a score of musicians and singers on stage, their exhilarating, joyful concerts are musical feasts drawing on the folk musics of all the peoples of Anatolia. A wonderful band unlike any other anywhere.
Kolektif İstanbul, in homage to the city they're named after, focus on the meeting of Anatolian and Balkan cultures. They bring together instruments from the whole region with a great richness of sound rooted in both the dynamism of Balkan fanfares and the soulful yearnings of Anatolia.
Inspired by Sufism, Turkey's most distinctive and successful world-fusion music-maker, Mercan Dede holds that when you put electronic sounds together with hand-made, human ones, you can create a universal music, capable of uniting old and young, ancient and modern, East and West. Mercan Dede's music also strives for other kinds of universalism, giving equal importance to simplicity and complexity, to rhythm and atmosphere, to the colours of voices and to the colours of instruments.
As befits the range of his musical interests, Istanbul-based Turkish accordion master, composer and folk-music researcher Muammer Ketencoğlu has three different bands: 'the Muammer Ketencoğlu Zeybek Ensemble', 'Balkan Journey' and the seventeen-singer 'Women Voices Project'. Balkan Journey performs a mixture of Turkish, Greek, other Balkan and Jewish folk songs and dance tunes as well as Smyrna-style rebetikos (smirneikos).
Honoured as both a peacemaker and virtuoso musician, Omar Faruk Tekbilek is one of the most sought-after Turkish and Middle Eastern musicians living in the United States, and has played with the late Don Cherry, with Karl Berger, Ginger Baker, Ofra Haza, Simon Shaheen, Hossam Ramzy, Glen Velez, Bill Laswell, Mike Mainieri, Peter Erskine, Trilok Gurtu, Jai Uttal and Steve Shehan among many others. Equally at home on the ney, zurna, baglama and percussion, his music symbolizes diversity-in-unity and while rooted in tradition, is influenced by contemporary sounds. He views his approach to music as cosmic with the four corners of his creativity as mysticism, folklore, romance, and imagination.
Playing at Thracian weddings and fairs since his teens, in the mid-80's virtuoso clarinetist Selim Sesler set out with musician friends to play in Istanbul and to develop his craft. He has become one of the greatest Roma musicians and group-leaders in Turkey, renowned for his master improvisations, wedding airs, his repertoire of Balkan folk tunes and his own compositions.
As a musician he had started his professional career with Grup Laçin, which they had played in both national and international tours. He has performed at Montreux Jazz (Switzerland), Jazz à Vienne (France), Rhythm Sticks (England), Moers Festival (Germany), Etnomalaga (Spain), Skobye Jazz (Macedonia), and has guested with Mercan Dede, Kardeş Türküler and the Yarkın Ensemble. He researched the history of the clarinet in Turkey and Europe, with articles being published in several journals. These studies led him to write "Techniques of Performing G-Clarinet". Amati-Denak, the leading Czech instrument manufacturer, had produced new G-clarinets with Serkan Çağrı settings. He has released two solo albums, "Nefesim" and "Âlâ". His Balkan Jazz project including singer Yıldız İbrahimova, known as the mighty voice of Balkan Jazz.
Since childhood, Süleyman Ergüner has participated in Mevlevi (Sufi) rituals in Konya and many ensembles performing classical Ottoman music. He wrote the first book about techniques of playing the ney, and has given many solo concerts and played at many dervish ceremonies in Turkey and overseas. His albums have received numerous awards throughout the world. He has developed his own style of ney-playing rooted in the classical tradition, and performs in a variety of projects: solo ney, classical Ottoman ensemble; semi-classical ensemble with singers, and Sufi ritual ensemble featuring whirling dervish dancers.