Visually-impaired Turkish musician in ‘cat vibing to Ievan Polka’ video wants to play for US president-elect

ISTANBUL

Bilal Göregen, a visually-impaired Turkish musician who took social media by the storm after a video of him playing the Turkish darbuka while a cat “vibes” to the Finnish song “Ievan Polka” went viral, has said he wants to play for U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and congratulate him on his win.

Last year, Göregen performed his rendition of Ievan Polkka, a popular Finnish song from the 1930s, and the video was uploaded on YouTube. Seated on a bench in an Istanbul park, he played the darbuka, a goblet-shaped single-headed hand drum, while singing in the video.

However, in October, a social media user photoshopped an animated clip of a cat “vibing,” or rhythmically bobbing its head to his music in the video, generating numerous memes on Twitter.

He later shared the video on his YouTube channel on Nov. 1, and it received millions of likes within a month.

Parodies of his video were also shared by millions of people around the world.

Biden supporters later added a dancing Donald Trump to the video after Trump lost the presidential election, and Göregen became world-renowned amid the tense U.S. polls.

YouTube also shared a post on its official Twitter and Instagram accounts on Dec. 6, describing Göregen’s viral video and inviting users to subscribe to his channel and listen to his music.

Speaking about the memes including himself and Biden, Göregen congratulated the president-elect and expressed his intention to play the darbuka for him.

“I would like to congratulate Biden. He is very democratic. I love him very much,” Göregen said.

“Democracy, freedom, equality ... are, in fact, values that every human being should defend. So, I congratulate Joe Biden as someone who defends these values,” he said.

He also expressed his happiness for creating a fun atmosphere in the U.S. elections with his performances.

He added that he always wanted to be the only person in the world to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest with his darbuka and that this desire was partially fulfilled with his latest viral videos.

With his unique playing style of the darbuka, the 32-year-old street musician became popular in Turkey on the local version of Turkey’s Got Talent, a TV competition, 10 years ago.