Bilkent and Kaş

After his medical degree, Çağlayan Yıldız’s path led to Ankara and Kaş. In 1991 he entered Bilkent University’s jazz department on a full scholarship. During his two years there, he played regularly with Yahya Dai and his housemate at the time, Mahmut Yalay. They performed on most nights of the week, sometimes taking more than one engagement in a day.

Bilkent’s library ordered music books from abroad that were difficult to obtain in Turkey. Photocopies made then still occupy a place in his library. The department’s teaching, however, did not meet his expectations. Much of its jazz instruction depended on Janusz Szprot, while instrumental classes did not provide the jazz teaching he needed. When attempts to change the situation came to nothing, he left.

His relationship with Kaş had begun earlier. He first visited in 1988 and worked there with Mahmut Yalay in the summer of 1990; Kaan Korad and Zeyno Bostan later joined them. He began living in Kaş from the summer of 1991, making it his full-time home after leaving Bilkent. In its bars during the early nineties, he played regular duos with Oğuz Büyükberber and Sarp Maden. Education in Ankara and life in Kaş were not two neatly successive chapters. For a while, they overlapped.