Folk music is not nostalgia. It is not a frozen tradition that only needs to be preserved. It is movement, change, expression - a mirror of society. Derya Yıldırım stands for precisely this attitude: for music that tells stories, that is passed on, re-perceived and redefined with every voice that sings it.
As a singer and multi-instrumentalist, Yıldırım has carved out a firm place for herself in the contemporary Anatolian music scene.
Growing up in a family where music was a natural part of everyday life, Yıldırım had her first experiences with the bağlama not on a stage, but at home - in the midst of home music, songs that have been passed down for generations. But her musical practice did not remain private. She studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, later at the Berlin University of the Arts and has been passing on her knowledge as a bağlama lecturer at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg since 2024.
With Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, she is part of a global movement that sees folk songs not as a mere tradition, but as a living art form. The band combines Anatolian music with new forms of expression and released their fourth album Yarın Yoksa (If There Is No Tomorrow) in 2025 on the New York label Big Crown Records.

But in her solo concerts, Yıldırım returns to the essence: voice and bağlama. She does not reinterpret folk songs, but lets them live on - in a space that knows no genre boundaries. The bağlama is not just an instrument, but a part of living culture - whose presence on the concert stage has to be constantly re-established.
"The bağlama belongs on the big concert stages, not as a niche instrument, but as a natural part of the local musical landscape." Yıldırım continues this story - a story that has existed in Germany for decades but is far too often overlooked.

Her music speaks of longing and resistance, of migration and identity, of stories that need to be told. A concert with Derya Yıldırım is not a nostalgic look back. It is an invitation to understand music for what it is: an ongoing dialog between past, present and future - sometimes tender and melancholic, sometimes powerful and rousing.