bReview: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek
Sunday 15 March 2026 at Double Whammy
Photography by Sofía Padilla Kent
Written by Nicholas Lindstrom
Sundays hold a special kind of reverence in my life. Perhaps it’s a protracted symptom of my Catholic upbringing, but what I choose to do with my sacred day is always approached with a deep intentionality. This particular Sunday had been marked in my calendar for a long time, tagged with the name Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek.
It’s been over a decade since the Anatolian psych folk outfit formed from a chance encounter at a theatre festival in the German city of Hamburg. At the group's centre is the instrument, music, culture and voice of Turkish musician Derya Yıldırım. Her collaboration with Grup Şimşek brings the Anatolian folk music that raised her into a new context. Blending the eternal with the contemporary to create music that is undeniable.
The past couple years has seen an explosion of international support for the self-proclaimed ‘outernational’ group. They have been featured in The Guardian, performed on KEXP and KCRW while also being on heavy rotation across NTS. And now they have arrived on our shores, touring in support of their most recent album Yarin Yoksa, a record that was produced by Leon “El Michels Affair” Michels.
The evening's opening act WAIWHAI. seems to exist in an enticing sphere of enigma. Even within the bFM music library, you can find songs from the artist filed under WAIWHAI., Whyfi or even just Wifi. A WAIWHAI. live set had eluded me for far too long and I was excited to see how the music that sat so well in my headphones would exist in the live setting with a full band. I was not disappointed.
The band ushered in a reverent silence with an opening cacophony of sound, accentuated by the chirping of manu before launching into a set that consisted of tracks from across the WAIWHAI. discography. Including songs from the 'TRASH 2: THE MOVIE' soundtrack and the more recent Slowdown World EP. The digital bliss of the songs materialised before the audience with the help of a superstar lineup of band members. The rhythm section of bassist Ryan Tomov and drummer Finn Mcneill reached hive-mind levels locked in, bringing to life the addictive groove that underpinned the WAIWHAI. discography. The gentle weeping of Navakatoa Tekela-Pule’s guitars and Anita Clark’s violin were profound enough to fill a swimming pool. Indeed, submergence is the best way to describe the WAIWHAI. band experience, which was channeled through its band leader Rāhana Tito-Taylor and his Roland Sampler.
At times he directed the movement of sound with a flick of the hand, at other times he called on the voices of his pūtōrino. Always with the reticence of a true jazz cat, muttering the odd ‘chur’ when necessary but never allowing the focus to drift from the music. Music that I lack the nouse to label in any effective way. There have been many generic tags proffered to describe the WAIWHAI. sound; jazz, avant-garde, free jazz, funk, psych rock, psychedelic, even a neologism like trap jazz seems fitting when you account for the autotune bars. And even though some if not all of these could be accurate, the truth is that WAIWHAI. exists within the only genre of music that really matters; must see!
There exists a prevailing wisdom that a culturally specific restaurant can be judged based on whether or not the place is frequented by members of that culture. I applied that same logic to the brief survey I took of Double Whammy in between sets and was buoyed to overhear conversions in Kurdish. Indeed, it was an incredibly eager crowd with an appetite for Anatolian folk that had Double Whammy three quarters full as Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek took to the stage. Yıldırım opened the show by brandishing her bağlama, telling the audience that ‘music is a force against oppression, and this is my weapon.’
I best enjoy folk music when it serves the dual purposes of informing and entertaining. From the outset Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek did both. The winning pair of Yıldırım’s voice and her bağlama sounded just as good live. Complete with the mic effect that makes it feel like you are listening to the voice of the past, present and future. And, it was an incredibly future forward sound. Despite being thousands of miles from its homeland in an underground space in Tāmaki Makaurau the bağlama sounded just as resonant, floating above the psychedelic arrangements of the Anatolian Folk songs.
Here I must make special mention of Grup Şimşek. Currently composed of drummer Helen Wells, bassist Alana Asha Amram and keys player Graham Mushnik, Grup Şimşek provides the groove on which the bağlama and Yıldırım’s voice sit. There is good reason for the band’s equal billing on the tour poster. They were just as engaged in the music and performance as Derya Yıldırım, playing with an earnest enthusiasm, throwing tambourines to each other and bopping along to the dance adjacent rhythms. For an Anatolian folk gig there was a surprising amount of dancing. After the song ‘Misket’ Yıldırım explained that the song was traditionally a lament, but it had been transformed into a dance track, saying that, ‘sometimes you have to go with the times’.
(Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek at Double Whammy / Photo: Sofía Padilla Kent)
Despite the more contemporary sounds, the show never lost focus on the informative function of Folk music. Yıldırım took time in between songs to explain the history of the bağlama, its journey across borders with Turkish “guest workers” carrying their suitcases in one hand and their instruments in the other. At these words, two men in the crowd pulled out their pūtōrino, holding them up in a form of silent tautoko. It was at that moment that the puzzle pieces fell into place revealing the stunning landscape that the show's programming had allowed to manifest. In pairing WAIWHAI. with Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, the show had brought together the newest generation of two distinct music cultures, both with treasured instruments, with a mission to protect, preserve and promote what has been passed down to them. And there was evidently respect between both groups, with rumours of an instrument swapping late night jam session.
There probably exists in some Manhattan offices, boxes upon boxes of legal papers. Delving into the minutiae of chord progressions to prove that two songs that sound very similar aren’t exactly the same. It can feel like there is an oppressive force dictating that all songs fall into a hegemonic formula or risk not being good enough for algorithmic push. On this night WAIWHAI. and Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek brandished their weapons against that suppressive force. Proving that sometimes that groundbreaking, algorithm liberating piece of music you’ve been searching for exists at the intersection between ancient and contemporary. Trap beats and taonga puoro, Anatolian folk and a little bit of psychedelic funk.
SETLIST
Ceylan
Darıldım Darıldım
Haydar Haydar
Çocuklar
Cool Hand
Misket
Yakamoz
Hop Bico
Direne Direne
Bal
Dom Dom Kurşunu
Güneş
Nem Kaldı
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