Tu Gul î, a collection of Kurdish Alevi soul infused songs, pay tribute to Olcay’s multicultural, multilingual upbringing, memories, stories and sounds of the past. It gives a voice to the sounds and pains of the valiant people of Anatolia, who persist in preserving their language, culture and traditions despite many injustices. With Tu Gul î, Olcay also pays her respect to all the strong, devoted women of her geography, including her grandmothers and her mother.

The album Rüya - Dream is the next step on a journey that began in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, over 3,000 kilometres from cosmopolitan London. To paraphrase the opening song Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım, an excerpt from Âşık Veysel Şatıroğlu ...

Inspired by the meeting of Asian and Mediterranean musical traditions, Olcay Bayir’s songs unfold ancient stories of love and mystery from the region of Turkey. Olcay Bayir’s songs unfold ancient stories of Anatolian love and mystery.

The first line of “Kayip Çocuk | Lost Child” was written when I saw a girl on the television screaming over the death of her father during the Isis massacre of Yezidi Kurds. The girl asked, “Why this is happening? Why can’t you stop this?”

This is a poem by 17th century Alevi asik bard Karacaoğlan, with music by Olcay and arranged and produced by talented Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Deniz Mahir Kartal. In Turkey the prolific output of Karacaoğlan is compared to Shakespeare and love and death feature strongly.