Derya Yıldırım’s vocal style may not be to everyone’s taste. Compared to Anadolu pop living-legend Selda Bağcan, with whom Yıldırım may be seen to aspire to, her voice rarely rises up to Selda’s great soaring reverb drenched heights. Yıldırım’s articulation is mostly thin and sometimes strident with a beseeching air about it. This comes across most markedly in her first song, “Gümüş” ...
Derya Yıldırım takes the stage at a packed house in Berlin’s Gretchen club one night in November 2019. “It feels like a home-crowd tonight,” she says before launching into her hit, Nem Kaldı (“A Song”) by Aşık Mahzuni Şerif, featuring frenetic saz cut through by wah-wah guitar arpeggios and Doors-like organ riffs. The music verges between joy and sadness, offers something close ...