Hogir Goregen

Hogir Goregen is a Berlin-based percussionist and instructor of Middle Eastern percussion whose path traces the old routes between East and West — Bitlis to Istanbul to Kolkata to Berlin — with rhythm as the constant. Born in 1986 in Bitlis/Tatvan and raised in Istanbul from the age of four, he began his musical journey at nine, singing in the children’s choir of the Mesopotamia Culture Center. His true conservatory, though, was the street: he completed his musical education in Beyoglu, Istanbul’s most cosmopolitan quarter, learning davul, darbuka, and erbane (daf) the way these instruments have always been learned — in ceremony, in street music, in the presence of older masters.

Istanbul’s mingling of cultures pushed him beyond his own tradition. In 2006 he made his first journey to India to study tabla — the North Indian classical hand drum, with its intricate syllabic language and centuries of codified repertoire — under Pandit Charanjit Chatur Lal, and he returned twice more, in 2011 and 2013, to deepen the work. Few players hold genuine fluency in both the goblet-drum traditions of Anatolia and the North Indian classical system; Goregen built that bridge across three dedicated journeys.

In 2013 he settled in Berlin, where he co-founded the Heval Trio — “heval” is Kurdish for “friend” — with buzuq player Mevan Younes and accordionist Mikail Yakut, drawing on the musical traditions of Eastern Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. The trio’s debut album Gundino (“villagers” in Kurdish), supported by Musikfonds and Neu Start Kultur, carried village repertoire into contemporary form, and the group performed at the Mosul Music Heritage Festival in 2023. Goregen’s own range refuses category: funk, free jazz, fusion, electronic, and experimental music — and, in the Verwandlung project with Musica Alta Ripa, a three-time ECHO Klassik-winning baroque ensemble, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons performed side by side with darbuka and buzuq. He has appeared at the Amsterdam Dance Event, and alongside his traditional instruments — daf, frame drum, riq, darbuka, daholla, davul, and tombak — he plays tabla and drum kit in various projects.

At the Tapadum Music Academy, Hogir Goregen teaches Middle Eastern percussion online, for every level from beginner to advanced. His lessons cover the darbuka, from foundational strokes to performance-ready speed and ornamentation; the frame drum family — bendir and daf — and the ceremonial traditions they carry; the riq, with its demanding interplay of jingles and skin; and the rhythmic language that binds Middle Eastern music together, taught the way he learned it: as a living tradition, passed from hand to hand.