Murat Ertel

Osman Murat Ertel (born 30 March 1964) is a Turkish musician.

He is the son of Mengü Ertel and Ülfet Ertel.

He is one of the founders of the Zen and Baba Zula groups.

While he was making improvised music with Zen, he also focused on his Turkish roots in Baba Zula and composed film and theater music with this group.

He also produces music.

Murat Ertel was born in Istanbul on 30 March 1964 as the only child of Ülfet and Mengü Ertel.

His father was an internationally known graphic designer and his uncles, Turhan Selçuk and İlhan Selçuk, were internationally known cartoonist and writer, respectively.

Ertel first started playing the xylophone while still crawling as a toddler and continued with his grandmother's harmonica.

He also started making music by turning his grandmother Hikmet Selçuk's record player and radio on and off while they was playing and changing the speed of the record player.

To accompany his music with dance, Ertel founded his first group in 1969 called "Mavi Güneş" (Blue Sun).

The name of the group emerged when Ertel, who was going to kindergarten, drew a blue sun and was told by his teacher that the sun could not be blue.

When his father learned about the situation, he went to Ertel's school the next day and said, "I am an artist; the sun can be drawn as blue or any other color my son wants; do not instill such harmful ideas in my son's mind."

Impressed, Ertel named his first band "Blue Sun."

It consisted of himself and two of his neighbours, girls named Esra Yazıcı and Aslı Kayabal.

They performed their shows to Ertel's household, but the group disbanded in less than a year.

Away from his family, Ertel continued to make sculptures, ceramics and paintings under the supervision of leading artists Tamer Başol, Zühtü Müridoğlu, Kuzgun Acar, and Ali Teoman Germaner.

He read poems in primary school and performed theater plays with sketches he wrote.

He drew pictures and cartoons of animals and alien creatures, and made posters that were not printed, just like his father.

Ertel often read some magazines as soon as they were published because of his mother's cousin Mehmet Benli, who published Vampirella, Jungla and Korku, and his uncle Turhan Selçuk, who drew Abdülcanbaz.

Ertel grew up with intellectuals and revolutionary people of the art world, including Aziz Nesin, Yaşar Kemal, Edip Cansever, and Turgut Uyar, who were his family's closest friends.

Ertel also met younger generation artists by watching the rehearsals of Ahmet Güvenç and his band Bunalım, with whom they were neighbors, next to the house described in Bülent Ortaçgil's song "Suna Abla" on Sağlam Fikir Street.

Bunalım was one of the first underground and psychedelic bands of Turkey.

He continued to draw, sculpt and compose in primary school, and wrote poems and stories.

His paintings were first published when he was 7 years old, in the program booklet of the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet's operetta called Polaria.

The drawings were later published in Doğan Kardeş magazine.

(1971) He produced his first magazine, Ormandaki Fısıltılar, in 5 copies, at the age of 8.

He would continue drawing for magazines and books throughout his life.

He was greatly influenced by artists such as Can Yücel, Mehmet Güleryüz, Melih Cevdet Anday, Ara Güler, and Cihat Burak, who constantly came to their house.

Among the musicians, he was most influenced by his uncle's close friend Aşık İhsani and Ruhi Su, who would come to his house throughout his life and play all of his albums from beginning to end for his father to design the covers for him.

He started listening to the records of artists such as Barış Manço, Fikret Kızılok and Cem Karaca, which he heard on the radio, pushing his family to buy them.

Because of his family's passion for art and their artist friends, he spent his life at exhibition openings, theater and cinema premieres, festivals and concerts since his childhood.

Starting from rehearsals to premieres, they have seen most leading theater companies like Dostlar Theatre, Kenterler, Nejat Uygur, Müjdat Gezen, Gülriz Sururi and Engin Cezzar, Haldun Taner and Devekuşu Kabare, Zeki Alasya and Metin Akpınar, Ferhan Şensoy from his childhood.

He followed these artists throughout his life, going backstage with his father at the end of the plays.

They also met with older doyens such as Engin Günaydın, Münir Özkul, Bedia Muvahhit, Semiha Berksoy and Muhsin Ertuğrul.

Since Mengü Ertel was a member and one-time president of Sinematek, he watched cinema classics such as Battleship Potemkin or Rashomon many times at a very strict pace.

The 8 mm films that his father rented and watched together already at home as a child were also shown in the school canteen again once or twice a week.

While he was going to English High School, he started listening to British and American rock bands such as the Doors, Santana and Pink Floyd.

His father bought him his first guitar and he started playing guitar intensively.

(1976) He started improvising with Uğur Güracar, Samih Rifat and Ünol Büyükgönenç at his neighbor Nihat Fındıklı's house.

As a family, they started going to his uncle İlhan Selçuk's house in Akyaka and going on Blue Cruises by boat with authors such as Azra Erhat and Mina Urgan.