İbrahim Tatlıses

İbrahim Tatlı was born in 1952, of Arab-Kurdish descent, in a country where folk music still moved through regional dialects and back-road cassette stalls. By the 1970s he had become Tatlıses and claimed Arabesk - the pop-folk hybrid - as his lane, recording albums like "Ayağında Kundura" and "Selam Olsun" that made him one of Turkey's best-known singers. He moved into film as a leading actor, appearing in several dozen pictures, and later hosted İbo Show, a television programme that became a fixture. The singing career funded business ventures; the screen work fed the legend. He recorded 42 albums in all, and the name stuck across decades.