Arabesque icon Muslum Gurses was known for years as the champion of the underdogs and downtrodden, the voice of the poor, working-class Anatolian youth that his own bitter upbringing perfectly embodied. Over the years he transitioned from an outsider to one of the most beloved musicians in modern Turkish history, with a legend that only continued to swell after his untimely death at the age of 59 in 2013.

His legendary status culminated in the recently released biopic “Muslum,” an ambitious yet well-executed film that takes viewers to the center of Gurses' famously difficult life, one that was riddled with emotional and physical pain. His mother was murdered by his own father, who is portrayed as a cruel alcoholic, and his brother was a military deserter who was shot and killed by soldiers after he refused to surrender. At the age of 24, Gurses was in a gristly car accident that left him in such terrible shape that he was presumed dead and transported to a morgue, only to be rushed to the hospital after staff noticed that he was moving. He suffered partial hearing loss and had to have a plate put in his skull.

Gurses channeled his pain into music and embarked on his career as a teenager after winning a local singing contest in the southern city of Adana, where he spent most of his youth. With his husky, somber baritone and lyrics of deep loss and heartbreak, Gurses quickly became one of the quintessential purveyors of Arabesque, a genre that emerged around late 1970s, when Gurses started singing and there was swell in rural-to-urban migration.

“Arabesque was something created collectively by the people and artists who migrated from villages to cities,” said Caner Isik, an academic who co-wrote the book “Arabesque and Muslum Gurses,” in an interview on Haberturk TV shortly after Gurses' death. The genre was synonymous with Anatolia and the Anatolians who came to cities as low-paid workers. Nobody embodied it better than Gurses, the last generation of a family of impoverished farmers who left their village in the province of Sanliurfa for Adana, where a young Gurses worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker.