Tülay German

Vocal Artist, Writer

Vocal artist, author. She was born in Istanbul in 1935. She started singing at the age of four.  She sang songs of Schubert named “Serenade” and “Ihlamur Ağacı (T.N. The Lime-Tree)” on the music program for kids by Ayşe Abla on Saturday nights for the Ankara Radio. She also took piano lessons from Ferdi Statser. In 1956, she graduated from Üsküdar Amerikan Kız High School and took the stage at Ankara Süreyya Night Club without the permission of her family. Between the years of 1960-62, she sang jazz songs. She was the first Turkish guest of “Melodi Kervanı” (T.N. The Caravan of Melody) by Hulki Saner for the Istanbul Radio. She also sang jazz songs in the radio programs of Salim Ağırbaş Beşlisi.

During the first years of her music career, she took courses from opera singer Ruhi Su. She sang traditional folk songs she learnt from folk poets Aşık Nesimi Çimen and Aşık Ali İzzet with contemporary jazz sounds. During the 1960s, she sang on quartets and recorded an album together with Timur Selçuk. In 1962, she made trials on “polyphonic Turkish popular music” with her husband Erdem Buri in 1962 and succeeded in it. In 1964, she was selected as the favorite singer by the music critics in “The Festival of Balkans’ Melodies” in where famous singers like Yurdaer Doğulu, Erol Büyükburç, Tanju Okan were involved and she was selected for the cover of one of the popular magazine of those days, “Arena”. Then, she released her first album named “Burçak Tarlası” which is accepted as the first “hit” of Turkish popular music. Till this album, the Turkish songs were just the arrangements of Western songs in Turkish language; but it is claimed that Turkish popular music was born after the release of “Burçak Tarlası”.  

When Charles Mingus, who was one of the legendary names of jazz music, listened to the “Tract” album of German; he asked German to sang the song which he wrote and composed after the death of Duke Ellington. However, the song named Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love couldn’t be performed because of the accident German had and the death of Mingus, respectively.  German worked with one of the best European virtuoso François Rabbath and she sang two songs for the album of Zülfü Livaneli; called Günlerimiz, and Yiğidim Aslanım and another song with the same name as the album title were the songs she sang. Besides German, Rabbath, Cahit Berkay, Erol Erdinç and Engin Yörükoğlu were the guest artists in these two albums.

At the beginning of 1966, German went to Paris and recorded ten albums in French. She gave countless concerts and participated to many festivals, radio and TV shows in France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Tunisia, Morocco, Netherlands and Brazil. She also took the stage with the famous musicians like Charles Aznavour, Lèo Ferre and Moody Blues at important concert halls of France. She recorded “Tract” which included the tracks especially composed for her by İlhan Mimaroğlu in USA. Finally, Tülay German recorded an album named Tribute to Nâzım Hikmet. After giving a concert in Netherlands on 1987, she quit the stage. A compilation named The Song of Poets in 1998 was released worldwide and another compilation named Yunus’tan Nâzım’a was released in Turkey in 1999.

Besides her music career, she was also engaged in writing. Starting from 1999, she wrote for the Adam Sanat magazine. She was selected as “The Favorite Singer” by the music critics in “The Festival of Balkans’ Melodies” on 1964. In 1981, she was awarded with “Académie Charles Cros Grand Prix du Disque” which is considered as the biggest music award of France and previously given to Moğollar music band in 1971 and opera singer Ruhi Su in 1998. The awards had been given to Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix previously.  

 WORKS:

Erdemli Yıllar  (1996), Düşmemiş Bir Uçağın Kara Kutusu (2001).

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