Şebnem Ferah

Şebnem Ferah — Biography

Şebnem Ferah was born on 12 April 1972 in Yalova, the youngest of three daughters in a family that had immigrated from Skopje; her father, a teacher, gave her early lessons in solfège and instruments. After forming the band Pegasus at her high school in Bursa, she went on to co-found the all-female hard rock band Volvox in 1988 while studying at Middle East Technical University, singing lead until the group split in 1994. She launched her solo career with the 1996 album Kadın, made with support from Sezen Aksu and Onno Tunç. She lost her sister Aycan in 1998 and her father, Ali Ferah, in the 1999 İzmit earthquake, losses that shaped the more introspective tone of her 2001 album Perdeler, whose title track she re-recorded with the Finnish band Apocalyptica. Her sound grew progressively heavier over the years, and in 2011 she also lost her mother, İfadet Ferah. By 2008 she had released five solo albums and more than seventeen official videos, and that year TRT named her among the contenders to represent Turkey at Eurovision 2009, though Hadise was ultimately chosen. She released her latest album, Parmak İzi, in 2018, and returned to the stage in 2026 after a long absence, playing to a crowd of forty thousand at Yenikapı in Istanbul that July.