Cem Erdost İleri

An oud on the wall, then a room sealed off from the street

Cem Erdost İleri was born on 21 November 1989, into a family with roots in the Kârer district of Bingöl. His own account of how music reached him is unglamorous: an older brother listened, so he listened. The first instrument was an oud that was already in the house, hanging on a wall before it was ever played seriously.

The route from that instrument to a career ran through the Turkish Education Volunteers Foundation, which he has described as the turning point of his life. It taught him guitar, and it moved him out of a withdrawn childhood far enough to consider music as work. He stayed on there afterwards as a volunteer mentor for five or six years.

After finishing secondary school he gave his time to music completely and built an isolated recording room at home to cut his own material. That is where the instruments that define him now took hold — the kopuz and the fretless guitar. He also works on long-necked bağlama in a tuning of his own devising, which he calls Hasret Düzeni.

He is sceptical about the idea that one string instrument unlocks the next. Ability on one, he argues, is not a reason to claim another; what carries over is the underlying musical grounding. He describes his first instrument as something closer to a mother tongue, still shaping how he arranges and thinks even when he is holding something else.

Records released on his own terms

The first solo album, Umuda Mavi, arrived in 2013. Dünyada Cennet followed in 2017. In 2019 he set up his own company, Ahâli Müzik, together with Ahâli Stüdyo, and put out the single Yandı Ha Yandı under it — the point at which release decisions stopped being anyone else's.

What followed was steady rather than spectacular: the single Üç Güzel in 2020, the mini-album İçinde Yol Var the same year, Gün Dönerken in 2022, and Yürüyorum Dikenlerin Üstünde in 2024. The single Taşa Verdim Yanımı came in 2025. Among his own compositions, Diriliş and Bitmeyen are the ones his biography singles out.

There is film work alongside the records — music for Lacivert Gece and Aşıklar Bayramı. He has said he would like to write more for cinema, naming Gustavo Santaolalla as the model he admires and Jafar Panahi's The Mirror as a film that stayed with him. His reading runs to Yaşar Kemal, and he once planned a set of musical accompaniments to scenes from İnce Memed.

PortakalAltı: the project that changed the numbers

The series that made his name started by accident. During a video shoot with Lale Koçgün in 2021, the camera ended up under an orange tree, and the result resonated enough that an unplanned afternoon became a structured programme. PortakalAltı — literally, under the orange — has since gathered actors, singers and instrumentalists to sing folk songs in that setting. By October 2024 there were thirty-four episodes out.

He is firm about one misconception. The sessions look casual, but they are not filmed on a phone: there is a proper crew handling camera, sound and technical work, because the aim was to make somewhere nobody who turned up would regret having come. One of the recordings passed three million views on a single platform.

An album, PortakalAltı Kayıtları, appeared in 2022, and the series has continued to generate releases with guests: Jehan Barbur on Benim Adım Dertli Dolap, Ecem Erkek on Mamoş, Ozan Akbaba on Üç Telli Turnam, Erkan Bektaş on O Yar Gelir.

He is blunt about the platforms that carry all this. Streaming, in his view, sets up an unjust competition in which algorithmic placement counts for more than what was actually played, and he would rather reach people organically than work the engagement numbers.

A second job on stage, in someone else's show

Since 2016 İleri has also been part of Gelin Tanış Olalım, a türkü musical written and directed by Semih Çelenk and performed solo by the actor Fırat Tanış. Çelenk assembled eleven folk songs and assorted sayings drawn from across Anatolia — Yunus Emre, Karacaoğlan, Kul Nesimi, Kaygusuz Abdal, Âşık Veysel — and the piece takes its title from a Yunus Emre poem. İleri plays in the on-stage orchestra alongside Mehmet Taylan Ünal, Eren Erdoğan and Sertaç Şanlı.

Under his own name he also works as a trio, with Olcay Bozkurt on guitar and Sertaç Şanlı on percussion, a format he has taken to rooms such as Moda Sahnesi in Kadıköy. The trio material is built on recognisable folk melodies pulled into different tonal and modal shapes rather than played straight. He has toured with Mikail Aslan as well.

The practical effect is that two distinct shows now run in parallel under his name, and the 2026 diary alternates between them.

Where things stand in September 2026

The most recent release is the single PortakalAltı Kayıtları: Pirlere Niyaz Ederiz, issued on 16 July 2026. It sits at the end of a busy release year that also produced PortakalAltı Kayıtları: Yenice Yolları and PortakalAltı Kayıtları: Yarim Derdini Ver Bana.

The other 2026 development is a live album, PortakalAltı Bostancı Buluşması, drawn from a Bostancı Gösteri Merkezi show — the first time the series has been documented in front of a paying audience rather than under the tree. Individual live tracks were released from it, including Güzeller Bezenmiş Toya Giderler, Üç Telli Turnam and the title song of his 2024 album, Yürüyorum Dikenlerin Üstünde.

Eleven dates are on sale. They open on 24 September 2026 at the Bostanlı Suat Taşer Tiyatrosu in İzmir and close on 7 December 2026 at the Çankaya Belediyesi Atatürk Sanat Merkezi in Ankara, taking in Istanbul, Tekirdağ and Eskişehir in between. Seven of the eleven fall in October alone. Tickets start at ₺1,100 for the PortakalAltı evenings and ₺1,375 for the Gelin Tanış Olalım dates.

What the room is like

Audiences who have written about the concerts keep returning to the same two points. One is the absence of any gap between the records and the stage: a listener in December 2024 said there was not a gram of difference between the live performance and the studio recording, and made a point of the thanks offered to the room afterwards. The other is the manner — a fan who saw the Çorlu show in May 2024 described the feeling of being addressed by someone met forty years ago rather than by a performer. A February 2024 entry praised the bass and percussion players as much as the singer.

The PortakalAltı recordings themselves have been called archival work that will outlast the moment, which is roughly how the touring version is being sold: not a promotional run behind one record, but the series moved indoors.