Şenay

Şenay — Biography

Born Şenay Ekiz on 19 January 1947 in Istanbul, the singer performed under the single name Şenay and became known for writing both the words and music of her own songs, favoring optimistic, humanist themes over the melancholy typical of the era's Turkish pop and rejecting the heavily made-up stage image common among her contemporaries. As a child she sang in a choir, attended an English-language college, and later studied jazz and soul singing. She turned professional in 1965, and by 1967 was one of the soloists fronting an orchestra led by composer Şerif Yüzbaşıoğlu, whom she married in 1970.

Her 1971 recording Sev Kardeşim was voted song of the year and won her the year's singer award, a feat she repeated the next year with Hayat Bayram Olsa, and within two years she was among Turkish pop's most recognized female stars. Seven prizes from international festivals made her one of the most-awarded Turkish pop singers of her time, though she withdrew from Turkey's Eurovision selection twice, first because her husband sat on the jury and later after his death. She is remembered as the first artist to perform at Bülent Ecevit's political rallies, which led state broadcaster TRT to brand her lyrics leftist and ban her music; she answered with the deliberately nonsensical protest single Honki Ponki in 1980, a hit abroad as well. After her husband's death in 1981 she largely withdrew from public life, stepped away from music entirely by the mid-1990s, and died in Istanbul on 4 January 2013 at her brother's home.