Anatolian Folk Music and Aşık Music

Petra's repertoire focuses on Eastern Anatolian Folk Songs about love, pain, distance, exile (gurbet) etc. As the music of Anatolia is naturally associated with the Bağlama, the instrument of the bards called Aşıks, it is strongly connected to folk poetry. The poems of the Aşıks go much deeper than typical folk songs, they could be seen as a kind of folk philosophy, a socio-critical expression, raising the voice of the people. Petra works with the universality of the poems of Aşık Veysel and Aşık Mahzuni Şerif. 

The beauty and variety of Anatolian music inspired several projects and collaborations like the Ninni Project with Engin Işık and Deniz Mahir Kartal, dedicated to lullabies from the region and beyond.