MANGA INTERVIEW ON NTV GECE GUNDUZ ON JAN 31, 2013

NTV Gece Gunduz / 31 Jan 2013

MaNga was on NTV's prestigious art program "Gece Gunduz" (Night&Day) on Jan 31st. The location was İş Sanat Cultural Center, where will be the venue of Feb 7th maNga concert. In fact, this interview is mostly about the Feb 7th concert. The host was charismatic Yekta Kopan who is also a close friend of the band. Efe was not there with the rest of the band.


İş Sanat acoustic concert series is very prestigious for the artists. Before maNga, Sila, Şevval Sam, Candan Erçetin, Duman and Aşkın Nur Yengi took the stage of İş Sanat. Now it's maNga's turn to take the stage here on Feb 7th.

The whole concert will not be in acoustic form. The half of it will be acoustic and the rest will be the usual regular electronic set up of maNga.

First of all, the host Yekta Kopan asks about the feedback of the 2012 album "e-akustik".

Ferman: The feedback on it was very good. We always put great emphasis on "e-akustik" being just a project, not the new style of maNga. Some people didn't understand what we were trying to do with "e-akustik". But in general, we got rave reviews about it.

Yekta: You have originally an eclectic sound and you like to go to extremes with your music. You didn't feel stranger to acoustic sound, right? Your fans liked your acoustic form, didn't they? I liked it a lot!

Ferman: When we play acoustic for that album...um, how can I put this? When we say acoustic, people think of one acoustic guitar and drums with brushes...

Yekta: There is a saying of Paul Simon... If a song sounds beautifully with an acoustic instrument and gives the audience a good impression, that song is beautiful at all times!

Ferman: We had to add an "e" at the beginning of "akustik", because it was not a complete acoustic album. In fact, we had started with that in mind, but along the way we decided that we had an eclectic infrastructure all along and a lot of things in our minds, so it should not be only maNga acoustic, but something else and we came up with the idea of "e-akustik".

Yekta: I wish Efe would be here, too! We're having a very nice chat, aren't we?
And let's talk about this Feb 7th concert. How will the acoustic part of this concert be?

Ferman: We're gonna start with acoustic songs. It won't be a complete acoustic concert. After the intermission, we'll go back to our usual electronic set up. What we dream about is that everybody sit all together in the acoustic part and then everyone stands up with the usual maNga!

Yekta: (to the viewers) You remember that, OK? Everybody sits and everybody stands up, including me!

I have a question for Yagmur first: In this kind of acoustic concerts, it's normally very hard to set up the sound. There will be an acoustic part and then some electronic instruments will be added to the set up. Will you have a hard time with this, especially with your guitar?

Yagmur: Actually I won't have a hard time, but this is something that will give a tough time to our stage crew. This is an extra burden for them, for our tonmeister. Because they have to set up 2 different sounds in a single concert, monitors and in-ears, etc... All the levels are different. In acoustic sound, the levels are low but in electronica everything will have to be louder.

Yekta: I was gonna ask Ozgur if he will have a hard time with changing brushes to bagets.

Ozgur: (jokingly) Yes, I'll have really a hard time with those. :)

Yekta: I understand that everybody will have a tough time, but Ozgur!! He'll just put the brushes aside and take up the bagets!

Ferman: And he sits all the time!

Yekta: Yes, he sits all the time. :) Joking apart, the moods are different, right?

Ozgur: Of course. Playing electronica, you have to be louder and more brutal...The cymbals are louder...I don't use brush much. There is another baget we call "root". I use them.

Yekta: So you don't even use brush bagets!

Ozgur: No, I also use brush, but...

Yekta: So you use acoustic bass guitar (to Cem)?

Cem: Yes.

Yekta: So we can say the same thing for you, right?

Cem: Exactly, but as Yagmur said, it's not a big deal for us. It's a bigger problem for the technical crew.

Ferman: And I put on a different thing here. :)

Yekta: There is a question I have to ask inevitably: What does maNga think about Turkey not participating in ESC this year?

Ferman: maNga thinks that we wish we would participate.

Yagmur: At least ESC would bring up some action in terms of music. The competition itself might be arguable. Some people don't take it seriously. But some action is good for music.

Ozgur: I understand TRT's concerns. The countries called "Big Five" have an unfair advantages because of the automatic qualification for the final. These countries take this contest very seriously so much that they send famous singers in the recent years. Turkey hasn't taken the first place since 2003 Sertab Erener due to the current voting system of 50% televoting and 50% national juries.

Yekta: Another question I had to ask is about Ankara-originated rock bands.
The dynamics of Ankara-based rock bands, the success of Ankara-based musicians in the music industry of Turkey... This success determined the dynamics of the last 20 years, including yours. What is the secret of Ankara? And is there a new rock band from Ankara you can suggest that I should follow?

Ferman: I can tell you the band right away: PLAN. They are really good and I had a chance to work with them for a song. They were the guests on my TV program. And about Ankara... You start, guys...

Cem: I think the color gray of Ankara might be one of the reasons. There is not a colorful night life in Ankara in short. It's a gloomy city.

Yekta: Can we say this, Cem? I'm not sure if you agree with me, but you have to be good at what you do because there is not much to do.

Cem: Yes, that may be.

Ferman: That's why the art is so important there. It's the only thing that you can cling on to, if you are a musician. There is not really much to do.

Yekta: But the friendly chat is something else in Ankara of course. It's a pity that I can't name here one or two place to go in Ankara. Let's go together some time.

Ferman: In İstanbul when we go to some bar to drink and come across some people from Ankara, we generally spend the whole night in a circle of constant chatting and the other friends from İstanbul say "you're like a gang, you know that? What is the thing about Ankara?". We don't know what it is, but if we come across someone from Ankara, the chat will follow.

Yekta: "You're like a gang", huh? That's good!

Ferman: One more thing... When someone from İstanbul or İzmir go to Ankara and say "we went to some place at night, it was bad and boring!". And we say "Because you don't know. If you go with us, it's something else".

Yekta: Maybe we should make a program only about Ankara some day! :) OK, I admit, I'm a chatty person, because I'm also from Ankara. We have to chat! What can I do?

The last program we made with maNga was one of the most interesting programs of Gece Gunduz history, because there was also Athena. It was right before the Soundclash. I know it went very well and it was really a distinctive concert. And you had some very special surprises at that concert. I won't reveal them now. The people who went to Soundclash know about them. Some of those surprises will be here on Feb 7th concert. Will there be other surprises on Feb 7th?

Ferman: We talked about one or two things, should we do or call for someone? But it's not certain yet, really. But the one we told you is certain.

Yekta: You didn't tell me about the other ones, huh?

Ferman: No, we couldn't tell about it even to ourselves.

Yekta: A bunch of crazy people are making a program here. So you have some matters you don't even talk about. I'll ask you something. Do you always improvise on doing things? If you talked over there and did not tell me, that means you haven't told about it to your manager yet.

Ferman: Maybe. :) We had to improvise some things about Iş Sanat concert, so this shows how much we are excited about this concert.

Yekta: (to the manager) I wish you good luck with them! On the other hand, in spite of all the progress in maNga's career, this shows your natural, spontaneous, friendly "let's!" way of doing things is still there. So, will this also reflect on the new album?

Ferman: The new album excites us very much!

Yekta: Is Yagmur the producer again?

Ferman: Yes, Yagmur has started to work.

Yekta: Is everything all right? Are the boys working hard, Yagmur?

Yagmur: I'm always trying to raise the bar, so that we can create something close to the bar. In my opinion, maNga is making the best album of its career right now. Maybe this sounds a little ambitious, but...I feel that way. Because we are attempting to go beyond the ordinary on this album.

Yekta: Did the producer cause stress on you raising the bar?

Ferman: In the meantime, we have to add the name of Iskender Paydaş.

Yekta: Oh, really?

Ferman: Because we are flirting with İskender now.

Yekta: I wish you happiness!

Ferman: Yagmur has just started. And İskender has started visiting us. We'll see!

Yekta: I really wish you happiness! Is there stress on you?

Ozgur: We feel the heaviness of the producer, yes. :)

Cem: Like pressure?

Yekta: Everything new creates a pressure on people, right?

Cem: Yagmur said that we go beyond the ordinary. He meant this: For the first time, we get into the recording room without planning anything and start improvising and pouring what we feel into the music.

Yekta: So you're recording simultaneously, huh?

Cem: Yes.

Yekta: Simultaneous recording is very challenging for maNga's musical structure. So you're right, you have raised the bar very much.

Yagmur: We came up with very interesting things.

Ferman: Interesting. We're very excited!

Yagmur: It's going to be a little shocking for the people who're looking forward to the typical music from us. But we've been thinking about changing our formula for a long time. With "e-akustik", we had started experimenting on something new...

Yekta: Longer songs than the usual ones...

Ozgur: Other than that, this was the most enjoyable: 4-5 hours of rehearsing, and then we listen to it and say "this part is good, let's use it!". We always wanted to do that. We're like "let's put the drums here", or "that guitar riff is beautiful, let's use it!", or "that vocal line is good, let's keep it!".

Ferman: Our new studio was very effective on that. We have to say that. We'd been trying to complete our own studio for a year. We've spent most of our earnings on this studio. Finally it's been done and this was very encouraging for us. Our studio have become our Limon Bar in Ankara, and our coffee house,...

Yekta: You're trying to make me jealous? Ozgur invited me many times, thank you, Ozgur. I feel ashamed now.

Ozgur: I'm not saying anything, you see?

Yekta: My last question: An estimated release time for the album?

Ferman: We hope it'll be out before the summer.

Yekta: maNga came a long way climbing up step by step, but they never lost their amateur "let's make real music!" excitement on their first day. Good to have you, guys! Say hi to Efe from me! Take care. MaNga will take stage at İş Sanat on Feb 7th.


INCI'S NOTE: Luckily, I'll be at this concert. And of course again, I'll try to share my impressions live from the concert with my friends. Stay tuned, guys!


You can watch the full program in 2 parts on the You Tube link below:

Part 1

Part 2

MANGA INTERVIEW ON TRT HABER ON 23 DEC.2012

MaNga's three members, Ferman, Yagmur and Özgür appeared live as guests on TRT Haber's morning program "Haber Tadında" on Dec.23, 2012. The host was TRT veteran İnci Ertuğrul.

İnci Ertugrul: We have you early in the morning at our studio. What can we want more? It's a little early for you, isn't it? You're working late at the studio, so...

Ferman: Yes, it's a little early. But it's sometimes good to start the day early.

İE: They say it makes the day productive to start early.

Ferman: We're going to go to the studio from here. Maybe it will be a productive day for us.

İE: Welcome, again! We have synopsis of maNga today. Can we call you that? You have been working on your new album for some time, right? We heard that you would release it in March 2013.

Ferman: We plan to release it in March, yes.

İE: How do you cope with that tough process of working on a new album? Do you have inner conflicts among you? You all have different musical points of view. How do you decide on what should be better?

Ferman: There is a modern hierarchy and a fair disribution of tasks among us. For instance, Yagmur is responsible for the big part of the producing music, so in terms of music production, Yagmur guides us through. Yet, everybody has different tasks to do. We manage to distribute them very well.

İE: If you can't distribute the tasks, the bands can't last long, can they?

Ferman: I guess so. I'm not sure.

Yagmur: We reached that point after a certain period of time has passed. We're still in the process of maturing. We don't have a written contract among us. It becomes a reflex in time. We say, you do that, you do this...Some things develop by instinct in time.

Ferman: It's not very different from marriage actually.

İE: Yagmur Sarigul, maNga was formed after you were expelled from your former band, right? The sources say that you were expelled. Is "expelled" the right word?

Yagmur: (laughing) "fired" or "discarded"!

Ferman: (laughing) "dismissed"...

Yagmur: Of course "fired" is a little harsh. We separated our ways due to compromising of interests and expectations. This happens a lot in the music world. We all have experiences with other bands before maNga. We can say that incident conduced to the formation of maNga. I was after a band making its own music and in Turkish, not cover songs of others.

İE: Whatever you call it...At the end, in a group activity if you can't come to an understanding with the other members, disbandment is inevitable. So it was time for you to break up with that band and to found maNga.

Yagmur: Yes, yes...

İE: Ozgur Can Oney, you are the drummer, but today you're going to perform your part more quietly. We want to know more about what is going on at the background of the band. Because we know that maNga...OK, we know the songs, we memorized all of them like school songs. But other than that, maNga is not a band that we know everything about.

Ferman: Do you want us to disclose our secrets?

İE: Yes, you have secrets! MaNga is well-known but not so popular. How do you protect this? Maybe you don't have written rules about it, but maybe you have some unwritten principles.

Ozgur: It's going to be a common phrase, but we're trying to be friendly in a way. As you keep this friendly demeanor, yes, it doesn't last long to be popular in that sense you mean.

İE: But it's like as if you don't want it to be that way...

Ozgur: Well, since the first album was released, we have always wanted only our music to be at the forefront and still want that. We have used all our savings to create our own studio, because we knew that this would give us more freedom in terms of making music. When we were busy making this happen, it was normal that people didn't see us here and there publicly so much. Just TV programs, or albums...

Ferman: Art, art, art...

Ozgur: Art is our life...We took photos on the way here. :)

İE: This means that it's still possible to get recognized by being productive without being "popular" in that sense. This is not a "must". There is a wrong perception about that.

Ferman: But in fact it's also got to do with the personality. We don't like to share everything about us. We're happier if we can keep some things to ourselves. And we can go out more freely. We're more comfortable on the street and in the concerts. We can communicate with the audience more sincerely and closely.

İE: Your concerts are a bit different than the other rock concerts. I saw you in a concert this summer with my daughter.

Ferman: Where did you see us?

İE: At İstanbul Aydin University concert. It was great fun. You're very relaxed and natural on stage, not being arrogant. I know every singer or band has a individually unique posture on stage, but still...It's like some music genres have some cliched view of how the singers should stand on the stage.

Ferman: Definitely.

İE: What? Am I definitely wrong?

Ozgur: You're definitely...definitely...definitely right. In case of live performance, you're right. It's the stage that we feel ourselves most comfortable. If we reflect this to the audience as much as we can , they can know how we feel.

Ferman: In fact, we barely contain ourselves until we are on the stage. We have something inside us that maybe we can't share with one another, but once we're on the stage, it explodes completely. The stage belongs to us.

İE: In yesterday's newspaper there was an article about a rock band (It was about Mor ve Ötesi). They say that the rock music in Turkey is still searching for itself.

Ferman: Every genre searches for itself. It's not easy to make music in Turkey.

Ozgur: In fact, you asked a very basic question. Actually we are still searching for ourselves or we are being forced to search. At the end, the music is a reflection of society. There have to be a search in all kinds of arts. It's not wrong to search for something.

Yagmur: In fact we are not happy about the general course of the rock music in recent years, either. There is a prototyping. Generally speaking, one of the reasons is that TV and radio channels don't play younger singers or bands much. Of course there are channels that play, but it's very hard now to distinguish oneself among others. It was hard when we've first come out, too. But it got harder and harder.
And there are other things in life besides love, separation, pain and we must tell about them, too. But unfortunately the program makers at the channels prefer to play the songs about these painful subjects, otherwise the ratings are not good. We have to expect the executives in the media world to start thinking idealistically. There is nothing else to do.

İE: The cliches pressure you, huh?

Yagmur: We always did what hasn't been done before. We tried to domesticate ourselves as little as possible so far.

İE: It must be utterly different feeling to be on stage, right? Do you see the audience? (to Ozgur)

Ozgur: Since I'm the drummer, I don't see the audience. Yagmur, Cem and Ferman see them the most.

Ferman: I see the most of them.

İE: Some TV hosts say that they see each one of the audience during a program. Some say that they don't see any body and present the program without seeing anyone in the audience. So you don't see them, huh? You're at the back, so...(to Ozgur).

Ozgur: Since I'm on the drums at the back, they don't show me much.

İE: You don't stand up and say "hey, I'm here!"?

Ozgur: No, I'm not a drummer who stands up.

Ferman: Eye contact is important. Because they come to see you live; it's unlike the albums. I try to make eye contact with the audience as much as I can. Of course it's not possible to do it with everyone.

İE: How about you? (to Yagmur)

Yagmur: I don't communicate with the audience much, because you know I try to communicate with my guitar.

İE: Is it the lead singer's task to do it?

Yagmur: Generally, yes. There might be exceptional cases but...in case of us, Ferman carries this responsibility.

Ferman: It was not that easy to get there.

İE: In Turkey, we are getting the chance to see live world famous foreign rock bands or singers in the recent years more and more. Do you follow them?

Ferman: But they come after the prime of their careers. Not all of them, but I wish we could see them here just when they swept the world with their music. We could have a different musical point of view then.

İE: I guess it's proportional to Turkey's recent economic upswing. Now it's easier to organize concerts than before. It's not only a demand in terms of music. If Scorpions would come to Turkey ten years ago, you would definitely go.

Yagmur: I was just thinking about Scorpions...

Ferman: Me, too.

Yagmur: It was great! In fact, I went to their concert at the last moment. Some friends said "come on, let's go!" and we went. Glad that we could go.

Ferman: I still can't believe they are German.

İE: Why?

Ferman: It isn't like German music; they are unlike other German rock bands.

Yagmur: It's incredible to be at their age and to have that kind of energy on stage! It seems that they looked after themselves very well. Because they should have looked after themselves very well in order to perform like that on stage.

İE: To get the same sound...

Yagmur: It's not easy at all.

Ferman: Our biggest wish is to still be on the stage performing and be on tour at that age.

İE: We also went to that concert with my daughter and she said excitedly that it was just as in the albums with the same sound.

Yagmur: It was a great concert.

İE: This has got to do with the respect to what you do and good care of yourselves, right?

Ferman: Definitely.

İE: Let's talk a bit about Eurovision now. You brought Turkey a second place, but you deserved the first place in my opinion. I'd like to say this first of all. TRT has announced that Turkey doesn't participate in 2013 due to some irrelevancies. How was it to represent the country? Some singers and bands try to stay away from Eurovision, but you participated and brought back a succesful result. What did ESC bring to you or take away from you?

Ferman: We don't make a lot of calculations about participating in this sort of competitions. Of course we talked about what we gain from this... Will we be able to play our music out there? Yes. Will TRT let us do this? Yes. Will we have fun? Yes. And above all we'll represent our country. There were a lot of merits and positive feedback we would get. We were sure about it so much no matter what the result was. We accepted the offer in this mentality and had great fun.

Yagmur: But Ferman had the big part of the responsibility in this process. He was the one who went to the preliminary negotiations with TRT and we had an urgent meeting. We were in Ankara by chance and we gathered in a hotel lobby urgently.

Ferman: (laughing) Secretly...

Yagmur: We can say that it was Ferman who convinced us to participate. We were a little...I mean our new album was just released then and there were some things uncertain yet. Ferman was thinking positively. We had a more cautious approach. We had talked about it that day and I remember I went home and examined my song drafts. We have a good habit. We can take action right away. We like that about us. We can become one flesh and brainstorm like "what can we do about this? The first thing we thought was what kind of song we should make, how we look and do on the stage.

İE: And you got a beautiful result. (to Ferman) Now you're making a program on TRT. It's a different format. What is it like to make a TV program?

Ferman: (laughing) It's hard. I realized it was hard. I admire all of you now.

İE: What part of that is hard for you?

Ferman: Generally speaking...There are a lot of things on the way that don't match with what you think.

İE: There are too many variables involved...

Ferman: Yes and they aren't things that I can predict beforehand, so.. Fortunately, I have a very good producer and he helps me a lot. It is hard, but at the same time it's fun.

İE: It's an interesting format.

Ferman: I'm having fun making it and I think I convey beautiful messages and music, so it's going well.

İE: I wish you good luck and keep up the good work. You're working on your new album that's to be released in March. Do you have other concert plans in winter?

Ferman: We don't have so many concerts in the near future. A few. They're going to be fixed soon. We're going to concentrate on the album from now on. Because we don't have much time. And we have a project for abroad which is an English album. We're going to work on that one, too. We're taking it more seriously now. This new year will be interesting. In fact, we say the same thing every year, and it passes interestingly.

İE: So you're saying we'll get 2 albums from maNga in 2013. Wow! And you have TV program going on.

Ferman: (laughing) If the world doesn't end...we plan to do all of them...

Yagmur: It passed now.

Ferman: You never know. Maybe we get more calendars.

İE: How did you think about that predictions?

Ferman: It was fun. It was good for Şirince at least.

Ozgur: If you recalculate it according to the Mayan calendar, two months have passed from that date.

Ferman: Ozgur studied astronomy, so...

Ozgur: According to the Mayan calendar, December 21 was two months before. And the predictions about the Planet called Marduk enters our solar system and NASA didn't see that are a bit utopian. Mayan mathematical calculations are generally very accurate but this is like some joke.

İE: Thanks very much, guys, for joining us in our studio this morning.

Ferman: We thank you.


MaNga members performed three acoustic songs in the studio during this interview: Yaranmaz Aşık, Cevapsız Sorular and Ben Bir Palyaçoyum. You can watch these songs on the YouTube links below:

Yaranmaz Aşık

Cevapsız Sorular

Ben Bir Palyaçoyum

And you can watch the full interview in two parts below link:

TRT Haber interview, Part 1

TRT Haber interview, Part 2

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.