Hasret Yıldız and Eren Şahin: The Universe

The Universe is a performance mirroring, indeed, the universe in which Hasret and Eren have grown up. 

Hasret Yıldız is the mistress of the daf – a Kurdish frame drum whose pure rhythm commands you to move. 

The youngest in the family of percussionists and singers, Hasret’s roots are in Erzurum, a mountain city in North Eastern Turkey which is much closer to the border with Georgia, Armenia, and Iran than to Ankara or Istanbul. She was – quite literally – born into the Middle East, a heritage she has kept and perfected through her work: she performs in both her native Kurdish and Turkish styles, as well as in Macedonian, Albanian, Romanian, Greek, Laz (Georgian), Hamshen (Turkish Armenian) and Persian traditions. 

Eren Şahin is the master of lutes of all shapes and sizes. He comes from Burdur, a city in central Turkey that has been overlooking a magnificent Burdur lake, as well as countless tribes and civilisations passing through, for the last nine thousand years. 

No wonder Eren has an unstoppable curiosity for the instruments of antiquity. For starters, he plays the Iranian tanbur, a long-necked lute resembling a pear that appeared five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, in the days when the Akkadian empire was the centre of artistic creation. He is also a master of kopuz - a word that means ‘an instrument’ in most Central Asian languages – which is a lute that looks like a teardrop, originally used to accompany epic tales and to cure diseases. Another of his passions is Afghan rebab (which you can see on the cover picture) - a relatively modern lute appreciated by the 7th century Sufi poets. 

Getting closer to post-modernity, Eren plays Oğur sazı - a lute created by Erkan Oğur, a legendary Turkish musician of our times, that sounds in harmony with jazz and blues. 

Both Hasret and Eren perform in the Ahura Rhythm Ensemble, whose many compositions they will present to us during the concert from their home in Izmir. 

https://youtu.be/Xd3NzS6Oq7E