Gülpembe

By 1981 Barış Manço was one of the pioneers of Anatolian rock, and his album Sözüm Meclisten Dışarı, made with his band Kurtalan Ekspres, was full of hits, among them a rural nostalgia song about a donkey that children adopted as their own. Tucked sixth on the same record was something very different: a slow, tender requiem. As Manço said many times, and as his son Doğukan later confirmed, "Gülpembe" was written for his paternal grandmother, who died during the Ramadan holiday of 1957, when he was a boy of 13. The melody came from the band's bassist, Ahmet Güvenç, and Manço wrote the words. Where some of his hits won over children, this one reached their parents and grandparents. It is probably Manço's most popular song, with only "Dağlar Dağlar" as real competition. It was later sung by the pop star Nilüfer as well. Manço died suddenly of a heart attack at his home in Moda on 1 February 1999, just before the release of Mançoloji, a double album of new recordings of his best-known songs, on which "Gülpembe" was chosen to represent the 1981 record. Millions mourned him and tens of thousands came to his funeral. A song he wrote about losing someone he loved became one of the ways a whole country remembered him.