Mustafa Özkent

Turkish composer, arranger, and musician Mustafa Ozkent was a lesser-known but significant figure on the Ankara music scene until his music belatedly found a receptive audience in the West more than four decades into his career. Ozkent launched his career as a professional musician in 1960 as the leader of a Turkish pop group called the Teenagers (owing to the fact no one in the group was over the age of 19). A talented guitarist who was known to modify the design of his instruments to create unusual tonal qualities, Ozkent earned a reputation as a gifted maverick and by the d...