Olcay Bayir is a woman whose voice is extraordinary in range and emotional power. She is a Turkish-Kurdish expatriate with roots in Anatolia, a land (in eastern Turkey) that has been home to Greeks, Armenians and Kurds as well as Turks. On Neva/Harmony, Bayir explores the repertoire of Anatolia and finds common roots for all the cultures that inhabited the land. Urgent melancholy suffuses her versions of centuries-old songs performed in a setting mixing tradition with electric instruments.
