-A Musical East-Mediterranean Journey-
The band “Muhtelif” founded in 2015 in Istanbul, now based in Berlin, the band performs a wide range of music in Turkish, Greek, Arabic and Armenian from traditional to popular, 70s to present. “muhtelif” which is an Arabic word originally used to mean “discordant, fluxional” in Turkish, then turned out to be used as “various” in time. True to this name, the band builds its repertoire out of the songs seemingly “discordant and fluxional” so to emphasize the musical concord of different languages and cultures of Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Muhtelif is formed by six versatile musicians each of whom has multiple projects
of different genres which becomes a fine contribution to the cultural blend and
the musical narrative the band
attempts to pursue. Nurcin Ileri (TR / voice)
Sevda Hamzacebi (TR / clarinet)
Penelope Gkika (GR / violin)
Ufuk Elik (TR / saz)
Cem Dinler (TR / piano)
Wataru Saito (JP / double bass)
Can Tufekcioglu (TR / drums)
Muhtelif released their first original song in 2017 with a unique music video featuring the band members wearing paper masks designed by visual artist Seda Mit. The song is directly referring to Kafka’s famous character Gregor Samsa from Metamorphosis and the video depicts an allegory of today’s modern life of white-collar worker.