Hamiyet Yüceses

Hamiyet Yüceses — Biography

Hamiyet Yüceses — born Hamiyet Sabuncu in Istanbul in 1915 — was one of the most powerful voices in Turkish classical music. After her father's hookah-hose business failed, she took the stage at eleven, spent a few years working in Anatolia, and settled for a long stretch in Gaziantep before her fame reached Istanbul. Returning to the city in 1932, she was crowned Turkey's Voice Queen in a contest at Kadıköy's Mısırlıoğlu Bahçesi, joined Safiye Ayla's company at Beyoğlu's celebrated Londra Birahanesi music hall, and later headlined the Taşlık and Maksim casinos.

Privately taught by the composers Selahattin Pınar and Sadettin Kaynak, she adopted the surname Yüceses at their urging when Turkey's Surname Law came into force in 1934, and broke sales records with the demanding Makber, set to verses written by Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan.

She married three times. Her 1940 marriage to naval petty officer Fethi Yüceses ended when he died in the 1942 sinking of the submarine TCG Atılay, a loss she voiced in the song Gitti de Gelmeyiverdi; after her marriage to Kemal Mollaoğlu broke down in 1955, she wed medical student Osman Sabuncu the following year in a union that lasted for the rest of her life.

She also appeared on screen in the 1950 film İstanbul Geceleri. Having left the stage in 1988, she died in Marmaris, Muğla, on 10 July 1996; her body was brought back to Istanbul for burial at Karacaahmet Cemetery, and a street in Kadıköy was later named in her honor.