Derya Yıldırım

Derya Yıldırım was born in 1993 in Hamburg^[1] and grew up in Veddel. She attended music school and learned piano, guitar, oud, bağlama and saxophone. She also sang in a choir.^[2] From 2013 to 2016 she studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg.^[3] From 2016 she studied music education at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She was the only student in Germany with bağlama as her principal instrument, an instrument that has a special tradition among the minority of Alevis native to eastern Anatolia.^[4] Yıldırım's teacher was Taner Akyol.^[5] At the beginning of her musical career, Yıldırım performed classical Anatolian music together with her cousin Duygu Ağal.^[6]