Selda Bağcan

Havva Selda Bağcan (IPA: [ˈsælda ˈbaːdʒan]; born December 14, 1948) is a Turkish folk singer-songwriter, guitarist, and music producer.

[6] At first she sang English, Italian and Spanish songs she picked up on the radio, but during her years as a student at Ankara University's engineering physics department, she started to develop an interest in traditional Turkish folk music, inspired by early Anatolian rock singers like Cem Karaca, Barış Manço and Fikret Kızılok, as well as the folk singer Saniye Can.

[7] Her brothers owned a popular music club named Beethoven in central Ankara, where she met some of these singers in person and where she was a regular performer herself throughout her years as a university student.

[7] The six singles she released that year, in which she interpreted traditional Turkish folk songs in a strong, emotional voice, accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar or bağlama, carried her to national fame.

Many of her songs carried strong social criticism and solidarity with the poor and the working class, which made her especially popular among the left-wing activists and sympathisers during the politically polarized 1970s.

Partly thanks to pressure from WOMAD, her passport was returned in 1987 and she immediately started a European tour, giving concerts in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in the same year.