MANGA INTERVIEW ON TRT MUZIK'S POP SAATI ON JAN 4,2013

MaNga's 3 members; Ferman, Ozgur and Efe appeared live as guests on TRT's late night music video show called "Pop Saati" on Jan 4, 2013. The host was a TRT veteran, Erhan Konuk. Yagmur and Cem were working at their studio recording, so they were not there.

Erhan makes a joke. "If they are here, there is no room for them to sit though, huh?"

Erhan's first question: Was it luck that brought you together? Because you have a beautiful chemistry among you.

Efe: It was kinda luck...

Ferman: It was definitely good luck, but if you don't have the right dreams in common, I don't think good luck will help. I mean, the good luck brings the people together who have common dreams in their minds. This is what happened to us.
We were playing in different bands and we were all in pursuit of music. One day we left our bands to make our own music and this brought 5 men together.

Erhan: So you found the lowest common denominator. In Ankara.

Ferman: That's right. In Ankara.

Erhan: Today your fans bombarded our social media addresses with tweets and messages. They didn't leave you tonight. Your fans love you so much! This is fantastic! (INCI: These fans were us and we bombarded internet with messages to maNga! We tried to attempt a TT event. We couldn't get into TT list interestingly, but we finally were able to deliver our messages to maNga publicly on TV).

Ferman: Definitely.

Erhan: I believe you got the good luck with success. The luck might have brought you together, and maybe it was a big factor in your success. You took the 2nd place in ESC 2010. You won MTV's Best European Act award. This can't be just luck! What do you think about this?

Ferman: These are good opportunities for the bands and artists. In order to get the chance, you have to...I mean if you don't work very hard, your luck might leave you very fast. If you continue to work hard, the luck is on your side one way or another. In case of MTV and ESC, our team and we were very focused. We made good use of our luck so far. 

Efe: And there is one more thing. It's not enough to reach somewhere. You have to work very hard to keep yourself up there. The work never ends. And of course you work in an enjoyable field of work: music.

Erhan: The best work on Earth.

Ferman: It's not a work actually. It's something else. This is our life!

Erhan: For instance, do you work right now? How nice! Ozgur, you're very silent.

Ozgur: My friends are expressing themselves very well. I'm going to step in when they can't find words. I'm courageous enough to say this. :)

Erhan: When you compare yourselves with European or American counterparts, who were your idols whom you looked up to in Europe and in Turkey? How do you see yourselves? Because you were successful in MTV and ESC.

Ozgur: We followed or looked up to some bands when we first started making music. There were some whom we covered their songs such as Korn, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, ..

Erhan: How about Cold Play?

Ferman: No, we weren't into Cold Play at all. We were affected by those kind of bands or imitate their sounds or song structures, of course. This was around 1995. 

Erhan: What about British bands?

Ferman: I don't think we were affected by the British bands so much.

Erhan: Muse?

Ferman: We like Muse, but I think we don't have any remnants from the British music from that time. But it's all changed now. For instance, we find some inspirations from the old and new British bands in the music of the new album which we're making now. We listen too many albums now. We're all ears.

Ozgur: To tell the truth, change and improvement continues all the time in terms of music. Because one is inclined to change, develop, mature or turn to different things due to changes where they are affected. I mean you may be affected by a certain kind of music for some time. A certain book or a movie may affect you at some point.

Ferman: We don't want to lose our California Sound as an infrastructure. But now we add something else to that and we mix them in our minds. This is something we haven't done before. And then we say "let's record it!". We make the new album in that way. We've gone beyond all limits. We feel restless and uneasy sometimes. But we like this feeling. We're like "What have we done?"

Erhan: All kinds of music styles are mixed with one another in the world now. We had pop music once. Now R&B... Hip hop is on the rise now.

Ozgur: A Korean hip hop singer can become world-famous at the end of the day.

Erhan: This is very interesting. He has a global view count over one billion. This means that every one person of 7 people watched that video.

Ferman: Only the babies don't know about it! :)

Erhan: How do you define your music? What do you call it? Is it pop-rock, real rock, hard-rock, or a peculiar maNga music?

Ferman: Now we ask this very question to ourselves, too. We're searching for that. This is why we have this endless excitement inside us. Maybe we are at a time when we the most ask this question to ourselves. Because what we do excites us so much and we can't define it easily. We always called it...maybe it's a bit large or premature definition, but we're on the way to what it's called maNga music. At least we feel that way.

Erhan: I have a simple question: Pop Saati?

Ferman : I was 8.

Ozgur: 7.

Efe: I was 8, too.

Ozgur: For years, you drew so many different audiences that everyone found something in you. You undertook a big mission and you're doing it very well in years. Thank you very much.

Erhan: How do you spend one day of your life? You are a busy band. We send you a message, but can't get a reply from you. It must be hard for you to get together. Because each of you has different projects.

Ferman: The hardest part is to find the available time slot for each of us. Around these days, we're busy at the studio recording. But each of us are involved in his own work at the same time. Maybe 2013 will be the busiest year both for maNga, and for each of us. We have projects for abroad and also the new album in Turkey, and other personal projects. I don't know how this year will pass by.

Ozgur: In fact, we have an advantage for this year. After we built our own recording studio this year, it became our headquarters. We often gather in there no matter whether the music involves or not. In the process of making music, even though all of us can't be there at the same time, most of us are there. We spend time together and it's great fun.

Ferman: So we can say the shop is always open.

Erhan: 24/7, isn't it?

Ferman: The heater is always on. :)

There were questions via internet flowing into the program. One of them was "Will there be a concert in Sweden?"

Ferman: We don't have many planned concerts right now. We have a few, but they are still in progress.

Ozgur: The fixed concert dates are on our website. 

There were fun moments during the program...

They drew lots to fix the winner of the prize which is a watch. Just as Erhan extended the glass bowl to Ferman to draw a name out of it, Ozgur asked "Can I draw?". Erhan said OK. Ferman laughed and said "The person whom I was gonna draw will be very upset about this". Ozgur drew a name and said in a loud voice "Ferman Akgül!". Ferman said, "How long have you been planning to do this?". Ozgur said, "Since the beginning".

Another fun moment:

At the end of the program, they were supposed to show the official video of "We Could Be The Same", but they have put a wrong video with a black singer in it. Ferman turned to the big screen behind him, and said "I've changed a lot, huh?" and then to Ozgur, "this was a better joke, right?"


This was the first public interview that maNga did in the new year. We hope they will continue to appear on TV and radio, or in the newspapers and share what they do with us, worldwide maNga fans.