“Everything in nature has a tune, even garbage,” Sertac Akin, who works as a garbage collector at the Cankaya district in Ankara province, told Al-Monitor. Akin and 11 of his colleagues have been making music for the last two years — ever since they formed “The Tin Band.” They play the instruments they find in the trash.
The Tin Band (Grup Teneke in Turkish) has given concerts all around Turkey, but their moment of fame was at a Labor Day concert when they performed before thousands. The next day, they played once more at the Labor Films Festival. The concerts took place a month after the municipal elections where the ruling Justice and Development Party lost the metropolitan municipality of the capital to the Republican People's Party (CHP) after nearly two decades. The Cankaya district where the members of the Tin Band work, the largest district in Ankara province, is a traditional CHP stronghold.