The Collective

Collectif Medz Bazar is an Urban Diaspora band composed of musicians of Armenian and Turkish descent. Drawing on their respective traditions and those of neighboring cultures, the members of the collective create original arrangements of traditional music as well as compositions of their own.

The members of Collectif Medz Bazar are children of Armenian and Turkish diasporas — all with mixed origins — rooted in the multicultural city of Paris. Their message is one of emancipation and fraternity; their music is imbued with folk traditions, old and new. Singing mainly in their mother tongues, they tell the story of an inner home, accustomed to exile, cultural blending and renewal. Bringing together voices that were drawn apart from one another, they contribute — despite ongoing hatred and injustice — to creating the possibility for a new common heritage through music, dance and thought-provoking lyrics.

Born in 2012 at Péniche Anako, in Paris, during a Middle-Eastern music jam session, the band started by touring for mainly Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish communities around Europe, Armenia and Turkey, and rapidly gained recognition within the world music scene, for its unique, uplifting style as well as its stance in favor of cultivating dialogue and peace between peoples.

Collectif Medz Bazar has travelled extensively through Europe, and performs regularly in North America and in the Middle-East. Fervent lovers of gatherings and exchange, at ease with all audiences, Medz Bazar's musicians perform with the same enthusiasm in major cities like New York, Diyarbekir, Montreal, Yerevan, and Berlin, as in remote villages reaching from the Cévennes mountains in France to the Munzur valley in Anatolia.