Gülcan Kaya

An Enchanting Voice from Anatolia
Gülcan Kaya was born in 1969 in the little village of Doluca near Erzincan, an Eastern Anatolian town, where music accompanied all sorts of everyday activity. She graduated from the Istanbul State Conservatory of Turkish Music in 1996, and wrote a master’s thesis on the place of women in Anatolian folk songs. She worked for four years in the Conservatory of Haliç University where she established the Department of Folk Music. She has been a performer in the Folk Music Section of Turkish Radio and Television since 1991.

The broad range of her repertoire, her competence over the characteristic-traditional idioms of various regional styles and her emotive and lyrical performance make Gülcan Kaya a unique voice among the contemporary female singers of traditional Anatolian Turkish music. Rather than remaining within the limits of the repertoire of a particular locality, she sings, with an equal level of virtuosity, folk songs of diverse stylistic and topical features, collected from various parts of Anatolia. She is accompanied by three musicians who are master performers of their instruments. Gülcan Kaya is yet a strong voice to be discovered by an international audience, and Karagöz Arts House aims to introduce her on such scale.

Kaya’s repetoire includes anonymous, traditional sacred and profane songs from all over Anatolia. Zeybek and Alevis songs, from the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea…a wide palette performed by an artist with a dazzling voice.