Ozgur Yalcin

Ozgur Yalcin is a Turkish-Kurdish multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter — the founder and creative center of the long-running musical project Kara Gunes, and the founder of Tapadum Music Store in Brisighella, Italy. At Tapadum Music Academy he teaches santur online, bringing twenty-five years of teaching experience to beginner, intermediate, and advanced students alike. His teaching rests on a specific Anatolian idea: that traveling is itself a form of musical study, and that the road teaches what conservatories cannot.

Kara Gunes was formed in 1997 in Ankara, playing rock music that questioned the system and the routines of daily life. Within a few years the band left Ankara and traveled through Izmir, Istanbul, Antalya, and many other cities, its lineup shifting with the local musicians and cultures it met along the way — the movement itself became the band’s identity. Originally from Antalya, the Yalcin brothers collected and refined their repertoire through years of travel in rural Turkey, beginning with the ancient tradition of the ashik — the wandering minstrel-poets of Anatolia who carry cultural memory through poetry and song to the baglama, often improvising, often traveling, always outside official institutions.

After settling in Istanbul in 2004, traditional instruments such as santur, ney, and kemence opened a new musical chapter, and Kara Gunes became one of the pioneers of street music in Turkey — building its audience on the ferry docks and along Istiklal Caddesi with Anatolian folk poems, traditional songs, original compositions, and improvisations. The band has released three albums — Evreni Dinle, Yeniden, and Mevsimler Gecti (2013), the last on Kalan Muzik, Turkey’s most respected independent label for traditional and folk music. Since 2023 Yalcin has performed in trio with the Italian duo Karkum Project (Giulia Tripoti and Claudio Merico), and his songwriting earned the Premio Musica nelle Aie – Autori (with Marta Celli and Vaggelis Merkouris) at the songwriters’ festival in Sant’Agata sul Santerno. His Italian story reaches back further: in 2014 Kara Gunes performed at Radio Popolare Milano’s Auditorium Demetrio Stratos.

In lessons, Yalcin brings the same spirit that has carried Kara Gunes for nearly three decades: repertoire drawn from Anatolian folk poetry and traditional song, original composition, and improvisation, shaped around each student’s own path. Whether someone is holding the instrument for the first time or refining years of playing, the goal stays the same — to make music the way the road taught him: by listening, by traveling through styles, and by playing with others.