Category: Culture

HP Culture
Anatolian Pop torch bearer Taner Öngür is back with new album Water Cycle

Taner Öngür has been the torch-bearer for Turkish pop rock for decades, even baptising the genre with the name ‘Anatolian Pop’. The bass guitarist cum multi-instrumentalist has played with many of Turkey’s seminal artists, including Barış Manço, Erkin Koray, Ersen Dinleten and Selda Bağcan, and featured in the line-ups of leading progressive and psychedelic Anatolian […]

HP News
Hasan Bağlar’s ‘My Shirt’ shortlisted by Royal Society of Biology annual photography awards

A photograph by Hasan Bağlar of a grasshopper shedding its hard outer skeleton has been selected by the UK’s Royal Society of Biology Photography as one of the year’s best images of the natural world. Bağlar, from Lefkoşa (Nicosia), North Cyprus, submitted his photo titled “My Shirt’, capturing the moment a grasshopper moults its exoskeleton. […]

Books
The incredible tale of Frederick Bruce Thomas, aka ‘The Black Russian’, who brought Jazz and music hall culture to Turkey

Any visitor to Turkey will know how important music is to the local culture. From Turkish pop to Ottoman-inspired classical music (Türk Sanat Müziği), folk (Halk Müziği) and the blues (Türkü), live renditions can be seen and heard everywhere. One of the country’s biggest modern entertainment traditions has been the gazino – a high-end cabaret […]

Community
Mehmet Veli ‘Kirlapo’: the original Cyprus rapper

The Mid Summer Ball (MSB) is one of the most famous club nights in modern Turkish Cypriot history, helping to bring a slice of the London underground to North Cyprus since 2004. Every summer, this mega event, attended by thousands of people, flies in dozens of leading House and Garage DJs and MCs to perform […]