YOLDAS

“Yoldas means "true companions". it´s also a similar word for "mate" in the 
turkish communard movement – but i assure: we have no political interests. 
Our music got the flavour of turkish melodies and lyrics combined with a modern 
western european rhythm section (but also traditional turkish 5/8, 7/8 and 9/8 
beats are very welcomed) equals a turkish rockband. 
Yoldas is a semiprofessional band. we got our day-jobs and in our spare-time we 
met to make music. We consist from three turkish musicians: Niyazi Ertugrul on 
drums and percussion, Bahadir "badi" Demirkiran on vocals and percussion, Mehmet 
Bayrak on vocals, saz & oud, as well a from two german musicans: Gerhard 
Schlereth on electric guitar and myself, Robert Oschliess on electric bass. 
Niyazi Ertugrul was the original founder. He knew Mehmet, Badi and Gerhard. and 
Gerhard knew me. So we started in may 2002 making music. 
In the beginning our repertoire was traditional Turkish folkmusic played the 
traditional way and some few songs were re-arranged by us for our feel and 
understanding. in addition to that we played (and still play) also tunes from 
Baris Manco, Duman, Athena, Suat Sayin, Mor ve Ötesi and also songs from 
Niyazi´s last band "Cold Turkey". 
These days we re-arranged all of the traditional folkmusic plus the covers in 
our setlist to make them sound more like us. since we grew more comfortable with 
that and finding our own musical voice we also started writing our own tunes 
last year and continue it this year as well. 
In summer 2005 we went down to Atakent, turkey, and played a few gigs there to 
confront the native Turkish people : ). Atakent is a famous holiday beach area 
besides Antalya in turkey, where especially all Turkish people spending their 
vacation. They were quite puzzled about their tradition, but I think they liked 
it. 
Currently we are still working on a network for gigging in our area (with 
expanding to Europe) and of course our songs and for a release, which we will 
produce and record by our own. The distribution is unclear for now. 
The new songs are more occidental based rockmusic with roots from the 
alternative music movement in the us and the UK; like Mor ve Ötesi does it. But 
there will be always still a lot of room left for oriental harmony-flavour which 
comes from the Turkish vocals, percussion, saz and the oud. We also like to 
write some songs in German language, but with Turkish melodies. 
As you know in Germany are living lots of Turkish people since the early sixties 
where the "wirtschaftswunder" causes to bring Turkish, Japanese, Italian and 
Yugoslavian people for working in Germany. The Turkish people are now living and 
working in the 3rd generation here and have a big influence to the German 
culture.