Kudsi Erguner

Kudsi Erguner (born 4 February 1952 at Diyarbakır) is a Turkish musician, considered a master of traditional Mevlevi Sufi music and one of the best-known players of the Turkish ney. ^{1 2}

As a boy he studied with his father, Ulvi Erguner, and attended the Mevlevi sema and other dervish ceremonies; he began his musical career at Istanbul Radio in 1969 and has spent decades researching, teaching, performing and recording the earliest roots of Ottoman music. ¹

In the 1970s he moved to Paris, where in the early 1980s he founded the Mevlana Institute for the study and teaching of classical Sufi music; his ensemble performs authentic, often improvised forms of classical Ottoman performance and a repertoire reaching back to the thirteenth century. He appeared in Peter Brook's 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' (1978) and has played with Peter Gabriel on 'The Last Temptation of Christ', with Maurice Béjart, Anouar Brahem and others. ¹

His recordings include 'Meditation on the Ney' (UNESCO Collection, 1978), 'Whirling Dervishes from Turkey' (1981), 'The Sacred Flute of the Whirling Dervishes' (1996), 'Psalms of Yunus Emre' (1997) and 'Fragments des cérémonies soufies' with the Lâmekân Ensemble (2021). In July 2016 UNESCO named him an Artist for Peace. ¹

Wikidata listed articles on him in eleven Wikipedia editions on 6 November 2026, among them Turkish, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Urdu. ²

• English Wikipedia article, revision of 4 February 2026. ¹

• Wikidata item Q1791046. ²