Aşık Veysel

Aşık Veysel — Biography

Âşık Veysel, whose real name was Veysel Şatıroğlu (25 October 1894, Sivrialan – 21 March 1973, Sivrialan), was a Turkish folk bard, poet, composer and master of the bağlama. He was born during the Ottoman period in the village of Sivrialan, in the district of Tenos (today Şarkışla) in Sivas Province, one of the children of Gülizar and Ahmet Şatıroğlu, a couple belonging to the Şatırlı clan of the Afshar tribe. Raised within the Alevi tradition, he is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the ashik tradition in Turkey.

Veysel lost his sight at the age of seven and spent almost his entire life blind; blindness became the defining condition not only of his life but of his art. Most of his songs carry a melancholic tone and describe the world through the perception of a man who cannot see. In his poems and compositions he treated themes such as morality, love, faith, life and death, tolerance, unity and solidarity, patriotism and nature. His mastery of the bağlama and his ability to make Turkish speak in its plainest and most powerful form made him one of the best-known saz poets of Anatolia.

The best known of the works he left behind are Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım, Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın, Kara Toprak and Güzelliğin On Para Etmez; today these songs are counted among the classics not only of folk music but of Turkish literature. Alongside early recordings such as Atatürk'ün Ağıtı, released in 1945, compilations drawn from his own voice were gathered over the years into numerous albums including Sivas Ellerinden, Ömür Kervanı, Anlatmam Derdimi Dertsiz İnsana, Aşık Veysel Klasikleri, Kara Toprak and Aşık Veysel Radyo Kayıtları.

Veysel's songs have been reinterpreted without interruption by the generations that followed him; Tarkan, Barış Manço, Gülden Karaböcek, Selda Bağcan, Haluk Levent, Belkıs Akkale and Hümeyra are among those artists. His influence was not confined to Turkey either: the American electric guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani included an instrumental piece of his own composition titled Aşık Veysel on the album he released in 2008. On 25 October 2017 Google commemorated the artist's 123rd birthday with a Google Doodle.

Âşık Veysel died of lung cancer on 21 March 1973 in the village where he was born. He continued to be honoured after his death: in 2022 he was awarded the Presidential Grand Award for Culture and Arts in the “loyalty” category. By a presidential circular published in December 2022, the year 2023 was marked in Turkey as the “Âşık Veysel Year” on the 50th anniversary of his death; that same year a commemoration-year proposal was submitted to UNESCO with the backing of Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan alongside Turkey.