Müslüm Gürses

Müslüm Gürses — Biography

Müslüm Gürses, known in Turkey as "Müslüm Baba" and the "Father of Arabesque", was an arabesque and folk singer. He was born Müslüm Akbaş and took the surname Gürses, which refers to the power of his voice, while working at Adana radio. His songs mostly dealt with sorrow and pain, he built a large following and he became a subject of university research; he died in Istanbul on 3 March 2013.

Born in the village of Fıstıközü, he moved with his family to Adana at the age of three and worked as a tailor's and cobbler's apprentice. In 1967, aged 14, he won a contest at the Adana Aile Tea Garden and began singing folk songs on TRT Adana-Çukurova Radio. His first single came out in 1968, and in 1969 Sevda Yüklü Kervanlar, released by Palandöken Plak, sold 300,000 copies. Esrarlı Gözler (1980) took him to a mass audience and the nickname Baba stuck in this period; Yaranamadım (1984) was his first album for Elenor Müzik. He entered cinema with İsyankar in 1979 and appeared in close to forty films.

From the 1990s he also sang pop and rock songs by artists such as Nilüfer, Teoman, Tarkan, Sezen Aksu and Kenan Doğulu; Aşk Tesadüfleri Sever, made with Murathan Mungan, came out in 2006. After his death more than fifty previously unreleased songs were published; his life was told in the 2018 film Müslüm, and in 2026 a hologram of him performed duets with younger artists on stage.