3. Selda BağcanSelda
I’ve got a lot to thank Andy Votel for. So much of the music that I love I find via Finders Keepers, and I discovered Selda Bağcan through one of his radio shows. She’s a Turkish woman and although I don’t speak Turkish I go to Istanbul every year with my father. My dad is from Pakistan and he always felt like I never fitted in in Pakistan so well, so as a modern Muslim woman he started taking me to Istanbul every year with him to show me Muslim culture and how you can exist as a modern woman in a Muslim country. And so we’d always go there and I have so many close friends in Istanbul and Turkey now because of those trips.
They’re fans of Selda Bağcan and when I said I liked a certain song they were like, "You’re kidding, she’s our hero, we love her". What she was doing in the 70s, this Turkish psych, is brilliant. I’m in love with what Selda does, that album is great, and I’ll play a few of those songs amongst stuff people know when I DJ, and people always come over and say "what’s that?" or you see them Shazaming it.
It reminds me of going to Istanbul, my favourite place in the world. Well it was my favourite place in the world – the current political climate has changed the city quite drastically unfortunately. And also, I find it inspiring to know of a woman who is a Muslim role model and who lived in a Muslim country making music as fierce as that. There’s also a woman called Googoosh from Iran, and I hold those two as my inspirational Muslim superstars.
