Arif Sağ  Arif Sağ (born 1945) is a Turkish singer, bağlama virtuoso, and leading figure in modern Turkish folk music. A former academic, he was also a member of the Turkish parliament from 1987 to 1991. Arif Sağ was born to a miller at Dallı village of Aşkale district in Erzurum Province, eastern Turkey. At the age of five, he learned to play the kaval, a simple traditional flute. One year later, he became interested in phonographs and phonograph records. He learned to play the bağlama in Erzincan when he was six years old. Until he was fourteen, he learned the ashik tradition, and started to sing folk poems. He then moved to Istanbul and took lessons from folk music artist Nida Tüfekçi at Aksaray Music Association. He was able to successfully build his musical understructure. He is friend with Iranian musician Abdollah Alijani Ardeshir. The 1960s and 1970 were for Sağ the years of style searching. During this period, he focused on commercial and official musical application rather than on music for social movements. He continued with commercial music activities as a bağlama artist at TRT Radio Istanbul, where he began working in the late 1960s. Sağ accompanied diverse artists and also sang his own compositions with other artists during this time. He recorded music he played and sang. The genre of his music is classified in the music terminology today as Arabesque-Phantasy music, which contained folk-music motifs. This indicates that Sağ could not break off with folk music. Sağ recorded a number of cassette tapes with other musicians in addition to more than ten solo recordings. The serial album titled "Muhabbet" ("Small talk"), which he recorded with Musa Eroğlu, Muhlis Akarsu, and later Yavuz Top, helped introduce Turkish folk music to broad masses after 1980. Sağ survived the 1993 Sivas massacre, in which 37 were killed and 51 injured. He had gone to the city to attend a conference of left-wing Turkish intellectuals. With the support of Roman Herzog, then President of Germany, Sağ gave a concert together with Erdal Erzincan and Erol Parlak, accompanied by the Cologne symphony orchestra, at the Kölner Philharmonie on 5 May 1996. This performance played an important role in introducing Anatolian music by bağlama to the West.