Bajar, an Istanbul-based group, connect popular urban musical forms with Middle Eastern melodies and Kurdish music, creating a hybrid musical style that reflects the city as a meeting point for different cultures.
Bajar introduces Middle Eastern modal harmonies with rock-based musical forms. Their music could be described as a mixture of ethnic music, Kurdish folk and rock music, and their Kurdish-Turkish compositions try to capture the diverse musical language of the city. Bajar speaks of the problems, loves and chaos of the city through lyrics that adress a wide variety of topics. The band localized many neglected issues of daily life, suach as migration to the big cities and the problems of Kurdish and Turkish workers as well as those of white-collor workers.
At a time when cultural encounters are suppressed, the group continue to the protest style, the expression of punk and black music traditions sharing with their audience many current issues, such as ghettoization, discrimination based on cultural hierarchy and changes in cultural values in an ever expanding city…
Bajar has two albums: Yaklaş/Nêzbe (2009) and Hoşgeldin/B’xêr Hatî (2012). The band has started to work on their new album.
