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DERYA YILDIRIM & GRUP ŞİMŞEK //SOLD OUT
Event by: Club GRETCHEN, Emerged Agency
Location: Gretchen, Obentrautstraße 19-21, Berlin - Bezirk Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Tickets: Get tickets
Concerts
About event
Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek (Big Crown, Bongo Joe Records/D) *live*
SOLD OUT *no box office*no box office*
Additional show on Monday November 24th, 2025
Doors: 7.30 p.m.
Show: 8.30 p.m
Minimum age: 16
Presented by untoldency, hhv and radioeins.
Derya Yıldırım sings a song that she knows from her grandmother - an Anatolian folk classic: “Hop Bico”, which means “Hop around, Bico”. Derya's grandmother interpreted the piece in her own way, Derya's version is similar - and yet very different. This is not a coincidence, but a concept, because Derya is convinced that if you play an old folk song, you have to add something of your own to it, “otherwise you might as well put on the old record.”
As a musical archive of collective experiences, the new album Yarın Yoksa includes original compositions and features three traditional Anatolian folk songs. Derya Yıldırım gives her voice to her family's cultural heritage, a folk song that was there yesterday and will be there for a long time to come. She carefully and respectfully transfers the songs into the present, gives them a psychedelic color and underlines them with hypnotic singing. In this way, something new is added to what already exists, which contains the experiences of generations, including those of today's society.
Born and raised in Hamburg, Derya began her musical journey at a young age at home, where she played traditional Anatolian folk songs with her family. Her father encouraged her to learn various instruments - starting with the bağlama, a seven-stringed Turkish lute. Derya also played piano, Ud, guitar and saxophone from an early age and became a versatile multi-instrumentalist. But she has remained particularly connected to the Bağlama - “she simply has something very magical about her, she is my companion, she tells my story and carries my voice.”
Derya condenses all of these influences into her own musical language, which draws on the Anatolian sound world and is at the same time contemporary and universal. During a theater project in 2014, she met the French musicians Graham Mushnik (keyboards) and Antonin Voyant (guitar, flute) from Catapulte Records and founded the band Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek with them. In 2021, drummer Helen Wells joins them, coming from the DIY and psychedelic scene in Cape Town, South Africa.
Despite their diverse influences, the band avoids the term "world music" and prefers to describe their sound as "outernational" - a self-confident expression for a more inclusive sound beyond borders. “You need a groove and a melody, and everything around it is free.” – This guideline guides the band’s songwriting and interpretation of traditional folk standards. "I believe that the melodies should not be changed because we are responsible for preserving the music in the right way. Our versions respect the roots. They are the same lyrics and the same melodies, but they have perhaps a completely different soul."
Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek's new album Yarın Yoksa captures this soul and gives space to its poetry and resistance - both central themes in the Anatolian musical tradition: "Some of these poems were written hundreds of years ago, but they are still relevant. This music is important because it remains the voice of the people, the minority and the oppressed." After producing several albums themselves, they signed with New York label Big Crown Records in 2024 and collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair) for Yarın Yoksa. The recordings are a balance between preservation and innovation and they give a sense of what if there was no tomorrow - “Yarın Yoksa”. If we knew better what really counts.
________
Photo: Philomena Wolflingseder
SOLD OUT *no box office*no box office*
Additional show on Monday November 24th, 2025
Doors: 7.30 p.m.
Show: 8.30 p.m
Minimum age: 16
Presented by untoldency, hhv and radioeins.
Derya Yıldırım sings a song that she knows from her grandmother - an Anatolian folk classic: “Hop Bico”, which means “Hop around, Bico”. Derya's grandmother interpreted the piece in her own way, Derya's version is similar - and yet very different. This is not a coincidence, but a concept, because Derya is convinced that if you play an old folk song, you have to add something of your own to it, “otherwise you might as well put on the old record.”
As a musical archive of collective experiences, the new album Yarın Yoksa includes original compositions and features three traditional Anatolian folk songs. Derya Yıldırım gives her voice to her family's cultural heritage, a folk song that was there yesterday and will be there for a long time to come. She carefully and respectfully transfers the songs into the present, gives them a psychedelic color and underlines them with hypnotic singing. In this way, something new is added to what already exists, which contains the experiences of generations, including those of today's society.
Born and raised in Hamburg, Derya began her musical journey at a young age at home, where she played traditional Anatolian folk songs with her family. Her father encouraged her to learn various instruments - starting with the bağlama, a seven-stringed Turkish lute. Derya also played piano, Ud, guitar and saxophone from an early age and became a versatile multi-instrumentalist. But she has remained particularly connected to the Bağlama - “she simply has something very magical about her, she is my companion, she tells my story and carries my voice.”
Derya condenses all of these influences into her own musical language, which draws on the Anatolian sound world and is at the same time contemporary and universal. During a theater project in 2014, she met the French musicians Graham Mushnik (keyboards) and Antonin Voyant (guitar, flute) from Catapulte Records and founded the band Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek with them. In 2021, drummer Helen Wells joins them, coming from the DIY and psychedelic scene in Cape Town, South Africa.
Despite their diverse influences, the band avoids the term "world music" and prefers to describe their sound as "outernational" - a self-confident expression for a more inclusive sound beyond borders. “You need a groove and a melody, and everything around it is free.” – This guideline guides the band’s songwriting and interpretation of traditional folk standards. "I believe that the melodies should not be changed because we are responsible for preserving the music in the right way. Our versions respect the roots. They are the same lyrics and the same melodies, but they have perhaps a completely different soul."
Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek's new album Yarın Yoksa captures this soul and gives space to its poetry and resistance - both central themes in the Anatolian musical tradition: "Some of these poems were written hundreds of years ago, but they are still relevant. This music is important because it remains the voice of the people, the minority and the oppressed." After producing several albums themselves, they signed with New York label Big Crown Records in 2024 and collaborated with Grammy-winning producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair) for Yarın Yoksa. The recordings are a balance between preservation and innovation and they give a sense of what if there was no tomorrow - “Yarın Yoksa”. If we knew better what really counts.
________
Photo: Philomena Wolflingseder