BIO page3

Mercan Dede was invited to play at GlobalFest” (APAP Conference) in New York in January 2004, where 16 different bands from 5 continents play. He is commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture as the music director of the Güldestan Project. The project represents Turkish Culture and Arts all around the Globe.

Combining artist’s 1st two albums on Doublemoon (“Seyahatname”, “Nar”) “Sufi Traveler” was the first Mercan Dede widely distributed release in USA. The double album followed an North American tour in the summer 2004 including 27th annual Vancouver Folk Festival (Canada), Stern Grove Festival (San Francisco), Grand Performances (Los Angeles), Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre, Celebrate Brooklyn with an audience up to 20.000 spectators in total. Finally reaching North American music lovers, Mercan Dede was featured as the cover of Global Rythm Magazine in September 2004.

The visionary musician has received critical acclaim and popular success for his body of work being nominated for World Music Awards in multiple categories by BBC Radio 3 in 2004 & 2005. His 2005 release Su stayed at number 1 on the World Music Charts for two months and his 2006 album Breath seized the number 1 spot shortly after its release and was one of the most downloaded World Music albums on iTunes, placing into the Today’s Top Downloads section on iTunes pages around the world. Froots Magazine also selected Breath as one of the Top 10 albums of the year and Songlines featured Breath in the category Top of the World.

In 2007, focusing on the divine beauty of the ney, percussive instruments, and poetic vocals in various languages, Mercan Dede puts forth an album dedicated to his teacher, the Mevlana in celebration of his 800th birthday. Music, dance and poetry were art forms integral to the Mevlana’s teachings, and on this album Mercan Dede creates a final tribute that fully conveys the lessons the Mevlana set out to teach eight centuries ago. Peace is the central theme of this album and as a result it sets out to convey humanistic messages and poems from one track to the next. Language is no barrier and understanding is attained through music as Mercan Dede conveys by calling on guests from many different cultures such as the Swiss Mich Gerber (bass), Iranian Ziya Tabassian (percussion), Indian Shankar Das (dolak & tabla), Chinese Shen-Qi (erhu), Canadian Ben Grosman (hurdy-gurdy), Tanya Evanson ( spoken words ) and Turkish artists such as İsmail Tuncbilek, Goksel Baktagir.

Mercan Dede is keen to bring his extraordinary music and stagecraft everywhere in the world because he feels its inclusive spirit carries a profound message of understanding and reconciliation. “I don’t like the separation,” says Dede. “The Sufi poet Rumi has a very good saying: ‘If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere.’  My somewhere is my heart. I try to figure it out.  The rest—the hype, the trends—they are not important. Instead of talking about war in Iraq, if you can make a sound of a small instrument from an Iraqi village, you can tell people more about what is going on there.  For me, the future is electronic and folkloric."