For the past few years, Hamburg-based Derya Yıldırım has spearheaded the Turkish-European crossover scene. The singer and multi-instrumentalist learned to play piano, guitar, oud, saxophone and bağlama from a young age. From 2013 to 2016 she studied at the university for music in Hamburg and continued her studies in bağlama with Taner Akyol at the Berlin University of the Arts. Yıldırım re-arranges the rich tradition of Turkish poetry again and again and takes it into the future, without losing an awareness of the past.
For her solo set, Yıldırım dedicates herself even further to Anatolian folk music. With Turkish bağlama sounds and the complex resonance of her voice, she pulls the audience into a world of melancholic sounds. She performs in a wide variety of constellations and projects, such as the international Turkish-psychedelic folk band: »Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek«. Two years after her successful EP Nem Kaldı, she has now released her debut album Kar Yağlar (Es schneit). Its symbiosis of Anatolian folk music, modern grooves, and hints of psychedelia, jazz and funk has been celebrated as the »new German-Anatolian psycho-pop sensation« (Junge Welt).
