Ismail Türker / Durmuş Türker - Sevdalı Köy Türküleri

He went to Germany to work for a half-year on an integration project for children and youths who come from an immigration background. The project evolved into a genuine calling. Ismail Türker, a native of Anatolia, has now lived for more than eighteen years in Osnabrück, where he works at the local music and art school as the only saz teacher in all of Germany.

On his latest CD, Türker offers compelling proof of his connection to the music of his native Anatolia and demonstrates his virtuosic command of the music born in that melting pot of Persian, Arabic and Turkish influences. Ismail Türker sets his poems written by his uncle, Durmuş Türker, to music. He sings of rural life, of big existential questions, but above all of love and the longing for love. A new kind of music emerges, with vocals, bağlama and percussion, supported by Martina Binnig on violin and transverse flute, sounds that are deeply rooted in a musical tradition, that are authentic and pure. Folk songs tell of pain, love, quarrels, fights, and of the longings of a people. The poems of Durmuş Türker have every chance to become folk songs like those, thanks to the support of his nephew Ismail Türker.