World stars opting for Turkish-made cymbals

SAMSUN – Doğan News Agency

Global stardom is something that each of Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Madonna and Ricky Martin share in common. Another thing, however, is the cymbals their drummers use: Murat Diril cymbals – which unexpectedly hail from Turkey’s Black Sea shores in Samsun. 

“I am working to put my name among the top four in the world cymbal sector,” said producer Murat Diril. 
Diril, 42, started working in the sector as an apprentice in the 1990s in Istanbul and began producing hand-made cymbals in an atelier that he established in the Örnek Industrial Estate of Samsun’s Tekeköy district at the beginning of 2000s.

“I worked as an apprentice with masters like Agop Tomurcuk and Mehmet Tamdeğer. I learned this business from them,” Diril said. 

“Currently, world-known cymbals are produced in factories. Machines are hammering the cymbals. This is why the cymbals of the same series have the same sound. Our cymbals are higher quality because we work by hand. It is never possible to produce the same cymbal once again. This is like a fingerprint of a cymbal. Machines use the same power while hammering each cymbal. But the human hand has different power in every stroke. Therefore the sound and quality are different,” the master said.

Diril said he and his seven employees produced around 600 cymbals a month in a variety of sizes, ranging from four to 28 inches. “The prices of our cymbals range between 250 and 700 euros. Our goal is to be among the top four in the world cymbal market.” 

Diril said he started working with manual labor and never thought of switching over to machine production.

“Cymbal companies which currently conduct production with machines used to produces cymbals by hand in the past, and these were very good. But they have lost their features. Machine-made cymbals are all the same. For a professional drummer, the brand is not important. Amateurs are interested in brands,” Diril said. 

Zildjian family

Diril learned this profession by working with the world-renowned Zildjian family, as well as the masters Tomurcuk and Tamdeğer. 

The ancestors of the Zildjian family migrated to Istanbul’s Samatya district from the Black Sea province of Trabzon in 1623. They first started producing boilers before switching to cymbals. The cymbals, produced with a special technique, quickly became famous among the Ottoman sultans and viziers. Besides the Ottoman army, the Prussian army also began playing these cymbals. 

The cymbals produced by the Zildjian family have won many international awards.