Meral Polat

With her remarkable trio, Meral Polat summons up the soulful inheritance of her Turkish-Kurdish-Alevite roots and attunes it to the multi-layered cultural discourse of the urban diaspora. Already known in the Netherlands as an actress of film, theatre and television, Meral’s musical passions came to the fore following her discovery of a trove of her late father’s poems, inspiring the songs of her 2022 debut album, Ez Kî Me (Kurdish for ‘Who Am I?’). Echoes of Anatolian mountain songs reverberate through the atmospheric grooves channelling Desert Blues, Afrobeat and Turkish rock manifested by keyboardist and guitarist Chris Doyle, propelled by the polyrhythmic pulses of drummer Jens Bouttrey. Her just-released follow-up, Meydan, puts into song the ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadî’ (Women, Life, Freedom) philosophy of the Kurdish women’s movement. An exhortation to freedom, resistance and women’s strength.