Kara Güneş Trio feat. Hogır Göregen: A New Formation Takes the Stage

March 5 opened our 2022 concert season with a special formation: the Kara Güneş Trio joined by Berlin-based percussionist Hogır Göregen, a musician whose biography spans Istanbul, India, and the stages of Europe.

Fourteen people came. Thirty-three more had been thinking about it.

The Formation

• Özgür Yalçın — voice, santur, guitars
• Claudio Cadei — violin, lavta
• Pippi Dimonte — double bass
• Hogır Göregen — percussion (guest)

The core trio — santur, violin, double bass — had been playing together long enough to have developed a shared language. Adding Hogır Göregen as a featured guest changed the rhythmic texture entirely, bringing a percussionist whose range covers Middle Eastern frame drums, tabla, darbuka, riq, daholla, tombak, and drum kit.

Hogır Göregen: A Percussionist of Many Worlds

Hogır Göregen was born in 1986 in Bitlis/Tatvan in southeastern Turkey and moved to Istanbul in 1990, where his musical life began at age nine in the children’s choir of the Mesopotamien Culture Center. Percussion came naturally — tambour, darbuka, and erbane (daf) followed quickly.

Istanbul, as one of the great crossroads of cultures, shaped what came next. The city’s musical diversity pushed Göregen toward instruments and traditions beyond his immediate background. In 2006 he made his first international musical journey — to India, where he studied tabla with Pandit Charanjit Chatur Lal. He returned twice, in 2011 and 2013, deepening his engagement with a rhythmic system as sophisticated as any in the world.

In 2013 he moved to Berlin, where he has built an active career performing with Heval Trio and a wide range of international musicians and ensembles. His instrument list — daf, frame drum, riq, darbuka, daholla, tombak, tabla, drum kit — reflects the breadth of a musician who has never stopped learning.

The Music

The Kara Güneş repertoire draws from traditional material across the Mediterranean, Balkans, and Near East, filtered through years of fieldwork and original composition. The particular shimmer of the santur — an instrument of ancient Iranian origin that spread across the Mediterranean basin — meets the Gypsy flair of Claudio Cadei’s violin and the jazz-rooted double bass of Pippi Dimonte.

With Hogır Göregen in the rhythm section, the music gained a new dimension. A percussionist who has absorbed both Middle Eastern frame drum traditions and North Indian tabla brings a rhythmic intelligence that goes beyond timekeeping — he listens to the melodic conversation happening above and responds to it, shapes it, opens space within it.

The result was an evening that felt both familiar and renewed.

See the Kara Güneş Live

Kara Güneş’s live footage and studio recordings are available on the Kara Güneş YouTube channel.

Tapadum hosts concerts and workshops throughout the year. Explore our handcrafted instrument collection or follow our upcoming events.

Özgür Yalçın is the founder of Tapadum and the founding member of Karagüneş. He has performed ethnic and world music across Europe for over twenty-five years and builds custom instruments from Tapadum’s workshop in Brisighella, Italy.