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Ozan Boz and Ozgu Ozman, the founding duo of Toronto-based Minor Empire, grew up in Turkey, and as they tell it, their childhoods resounded with traditional music.

“It’s always in your ears,” Boz recalled. “On the radio, on the TV, your mother sings it to you, your father listens to it.”

Those familiar sounds fell silent when they moved to Canada, and filling the vacuum was country, rock, pop, funk and jazz.  When Boz and Ozman eventually decided to pursue careers in music, they wrote and performed in English, but the Turkish music was always there under the surface.

“We realized that the traditional music was ingrained in us,” Boz said. “But we also did not want to give up on the modern edge of the new music we liked so much.”

Boz and Ozman formed Minor Empire and began mixing elements from both musical worlds, where Ozman’s Turkish lyrics drift through a dreamy, jazzy soundscape of guitars and percussion.

Boz believes they’ve achieved a confluence of styles “without compromising the eastern or western elements of the music.”

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