Aşık Veysel

Aşık Veysel — Biography

Veysel Şatıroğlu, better known as Âşık Veysel (25 October 1894 – 21 March 1973), was a Turkish folk bard, poet, composer and bağlama player. He came into the world in the Ottoman era in the village of Sivrialan, attached to the Şarkışla district of Sivas, as one of the children of Gülizar and Ahmet Şatıroğlu, a family from the Şatırlı clan of the Afshar tribe. Brought up in the Alevi culture, he came to be seen as one of the most distinguished figures of the ashik tradition in Anatolia.

Having gone blind at the age of seven, Veysel lived almost his whole life without sight, and this shaped his art as well: his songs tend to be sorrowful and voice the world as perceived by a man who cannot see. His verse dealt with morality, love, faith, life and death, tolerance, togetherness, love of homeland and nature. His command of the saz, together with a strikingly plain yet forceful use of the Turkish language, turned him into one of the most widely recognized saz poets of Anatolia.

His most famous songs include Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım, Dostlar Beni Hatırlasın, Kara Toprak and Güzelliğin On Para Etmez, which today stand as classics not merely of folk music but of Turkish literature as a whole. Besides early recordings such as the 1945 release Atatürk'ün Ağıtı, collections drawn from his own voice were assembled over the decades into many albums, among them Sivas Ellerinden, Ömür Kervanı, Anlatmam Derdimi Dertsiz İnsana, Aşık Veysel Klasikleri and Aşık Veysel Radyo Kayıtları.

Later generations never stopped reinterpreting his songs; Tarkan, Barış Manço, Gülden Karaböcek, Selda Bağcan, Haluk Levent, Belkıs Akkale and Hümeyra number among those artists. His reach extended abroad as well: American guitarist Joe Satriani placed a self-composed instrumental titled Aşık Veysel on his 2008 album. On 25 October 2017 Google marked what would have been the artist's 123rd birthday with a doodle.

Âşık Veysel passed away from lung cancer on 21 March 1973 in the same village where he had been born. Recognition continued after his death: in 2022 he received the Presidential Grand Award for Culture and Arts in the "loyalty" category. Through a presidential circular issued in December 2022, the year 2023 — the 50th anniversary of his passing — was celebrated across Turkey as the "Âşık Veysel Year". In the same year, a proposal for a commemoration year was put forward to UNESCO, backed not only by Turkey but also by Azerbaijan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.