Remembering out loud.

Saygı is Turkish for respect. SAYGI1 — Babala TV and Sinerji Medya’s honours format — pays it while the artist is alive to receive it: peers take over the catalogue for a night, and the artist watches their own songbook come back at them from the room. The first night belonged to Ceza; the second to Sertab Erener. The third went to the thirty-year backbone of Turkish alternative rock: Mor ve Ötesi.

The night ran six hours, almost all of it played live. The lineup came from every corner of the map: generations of rock from Bulutsuzluk Özlemi to Son Feci Bisiklet; Sıla, Edis, Simge Sağın and Aleyna Tilki from pop; Birsen Tezer, Dilek Türkan and Nükhet Duru from other traditions; Madrigal, Adamlar, Dolu Kadehi Ters Tut, Nilipek, Batuhan Polat, Ece Dağıstan, Simge Pınar, Arem & Arman, Paptircem & Dilan Balkay from the new generation; Pitch Black Process from metal, Tolgahan Çoğulu from classical guitar. And Ceza — the series’ first honouree — came back to pay his own respect, joining Mor ve Ötesi on stage for a song.

This night cut deeper. For thirty years, Mor ve Ötesi’s songs have been written into the country’s recent memory — every song played that night was the marker of an era. The room didn’t listen to a catalogue; together, it looked back at a recent history it had memorised in Mor ve Ötesi’s voice.

OKYU’s founding team built the night’s moment. Behind the LED walls, a hundred-piece symphony orchestra and choir waited unseen. When Mor ve Ötesi took the stage, the walls lifted — and the Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra appeared. The night the room thought was a rock concert became something else in that second. The stage architecture was designed to serve it: a tiered angled roof, LED surfaces built to rise, and light worked into the lines of the structure itself.

A three-hour cut of the six-hour night went out on Babala TV’s YouTube channel and has passed 2.9 million views. SAYGI1 continues — and after three nights, the format’s claim is clear: genre doesn’t matter. Respect is something you can design.