“Great Poets and 40 Saz”: The Voice of Anatolia Rises Again on the 21st-Century Stage
Performed in Antalya on November 8, 2025, “Ulu Ozanlar ve 40 Saz” went down in music history as one of the most comprehensive folk music projects to blend Anatolia’s tradition of minstrelsy with contemporary performing arts.
TUTAV’s large-scale cultural project transforms folk music into a ritual of collective memory.
Performed in Antalya on November 8, 2025, “Ulu Ozanlar ve 40 Saz” went down in music history as one of the most comprehensive folk music projects to blend Anatolia’s tradition of bards with contemporary performing arts.
With the participation of approximately 2,700 people, the performance became a veritable cultural gathering; the audience filling the hall witnessed the revival of Anatolia’s musical heritage in the atmosphere of a grand ceremony.
The project featured Cengiz Özkan, Muharrem Temiz, İlke Türkdoğan, Ayfer Vardar, and Cem Çelebi, living masters of folk music. On stage, a large ensemble of 40 bağlama players offered the audience not just a concert, but an experience that served as a living representation of Anatolia’s collective memory, oral history, and ritual aesthetics, bringing together the roots of Anatolian music with a universal theatrical language.
In his speech, Board Chairman Mehmet Şükrü Koçoğlu recalled the roots of Anatolia’s ancient culture, emphasizing: “We brought this culture from Central Asia, but Anatolia already possessed a legacy spanning thousands of years. It is said that ‘words fly away, but writing remains,’ yet sometimes the writing is lost, and the words endure. The greatest libraries in history—Alexandria and Alamut—did not survive to the present day; perhaps knowledge that could have changed the world was lost. Yet the spoken word and the breath of life have continued to live on from generation to generation.”
Highlighting the resilience of the Anatolian minstrel tradition, Koçoğlu said, “This culture was passed down from generation to generation even without books; we must all respect this.”
Recalling a famous saying from the tradition of the aşık, he concluded his remarks as follows: “Touch me, but don’t touch my string. Many have touched that string; it was banned, it was pushed aside. But that string is still playing, and it will continue to play.”
TUTAV’s goal with this project is to transform folk music from a nostalgic tradition into an innovative cultural space with which younger generations can also connect. For this reason, “Ulu Ozanlar ve 40 Saz” is viewed not merely as a musical event, but as a powerful cultural diplomacy initiative that highlights cultural continuity.