Derya Yıldırım was born in 1993 in Hamburg and grew up in
Veddel. She attended music school and learned piano, guitar,
oud, bağlama and saxophone. She also sang in a choir. From 2013 to 2016 she studied at the
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. From 2016 she studied music education at the
Universität der Künste in Berlin. She was the only student in Germany with bağlama as her principal instrument, an instrument that has a special tradition among the minority of
Alevis native to eastern
Anatolia. Yıldırım's teacher was
Taner Akyol. At the beginning of her musical career, Yıldırım performed classical Anatolian music together with her cousin Duygu Ağal. == References ==