Undomondo's Istanbul Playlist. Click above for the full mix, or play the individual tracks below. Photograph: Serkan Senturk/AP

Kemani Haydar Tatliyay – Arap oyun havasi

This is a traditional song whose title gives away its Arabic origin. It's very in tune with the early 1900s-era Istanbul; of the ports of Eminönü and Karaköy, a bustling capital of Europeans, pavilions, meyhanes, dancing, fighting, and sex. It's the very opposite of how Turkey is trying to market itself today: a sanitised version of the Orient with neys and whirling dervishes. But, for me, Istanbul has always been a hub of nightlife, cultural clash, sleaze and raki.

Richard Hagopian & Omar Faruk Tekbilek – Kadife

This heavenly collaboration between American-Armenian oud player Richard Avedis Hagopian and Turkish Sufi ney player and band leader Omar Faruk Tekbilek is a version of a well-known traditional song called Kadifeden Kesesi. The CD sleeve says it is "reminiscent of New York's 8th Avenue club scene of the 1950s, where Gypsies, Armenians, Turks, Jews, Greeks and Arabs played music together". Is this the way they got down? If so, please teleport me to that era. The chorus, where Hagopian sings "Uskudar'a yolla / Beyoğlu'na yolla / Istanbul'a yolla" always brings tears to my eyes: I can hear and see the exiled people of the former Ottoman Empire yearning to be welcomed back to Istanbul once again.

Orhan Gencebay – Hayat kavgasi

Arabesk (or Arabesque) is one of the most polarising genres in Turkish musical history. It is an umbrella term for many eastern-influenced working class songs which are typically very sad, or downright mutinous, and which were thrust into the life of Istanbul's urban bourgeoisie by the big wave of "immigration" from Anatolia in the 1970s and 1980s. Orhan Gencebay is the master of the genre: banned on state TV during the 1980s, Gencebay is now regarded as one of the country's top artists. However, Arabesk has lost both its critical mass and subversive potential: it has been integrated into the Turkish mainstream music market, and its variants can be heard everywhere. To find out more about the genre, watch this documentary.

Bariş Manço – Anliyorsun Değil Mi

Compiling an Istanbul list without the late Bariş Manço would be nigh impossible. Manço, educated at Belgium's Royal Academy, was an Anatolian rock star who became one of the most celebrated public figures in Turkey, loved by everyone from 7 to 77 (the name of a TV programme he made for eight years). The news of his death made yours truly cry hysterically, although most of his admirers have probably never admitted to being a fan. His anthology is huge and his Anatolian rock legacy has seen a big revival, thanks to the work of labels like Finders Keepers. But I went for a personal favourite here: this is from 1979, and it's one of his most progressive songs.

Ferdi Özbeğen – Köprüden Geçti Gelin

When I asked a French friend of mine, who had spent six years in Istanbul, if he had a song that reminded him of the city, he named this track without any hesitation. This is a traditional song turned jazzy by Ferdi Özbeğen, who used to be a pioneer of funky, jazzy Turkish pop. Unfortunately he went mainstream, and his career took a nosedive in the late 1980s. This song title means "The bride has crossed the bridge". It's not actually about the bridges in Istanbul, but since all the city's traffic jams are caused by those two damn bridges, you might want to pretend it is when gridlock strikes.

Okay Temiz – Denizalti Rüzgarlari

This summer, at a festival in Croatia where my partner in crime, DJ Barış K, was playing, I was amazed to hear the legendary Beppe Loda (a pioneer of Italo disco) play this song. He told us the story of how he discovered it in 1982, and has been a fan of Okay Temiz ever since. Temiz, a well-known drummer, percussionist and band leader, is mostly (and unfortunately) known as "that cooky percussionist", and not as the legendary jazz man who's worked with Don Cherry, Sylvain Kassap or the Mehteran. So much for being avant garde in Turkey. And have a look at this bizarre recording of the song, broadcast on state TV on New Year's Eve 1984.

Erkan Oğur – Gnossiennes No.3

The version of this music on Ensemble Sarband's Satie en Orient album, and this piece by Erkan Oğur are both excellent musical snapshot of Istanbul at the geographic and cultural crossroads. For, while most sensible Istanbulites hate the hoary old marketing term "bridge between cultures", the city is indeed a perpetual-motion machine, sucking in western cultural concepts and producing its own idiosyncratic variant. This music comes from the soundtrack of the 2004 Turkish movie Yazi-Tura.

Nekropsi – Foklar

Nekropsi were one of the first Turkish bands to win international acclaim (at least in the underground) in the 1990s, after a barren musical decade that began after the military coup in 1980. Although they use western forms like math rock and distortion, Nekropsi's sound has a distinctive downtown Istanbul flavour. They have one song called Mecidiyeköy, named after an neighbourhood where nothing interesting has happened since Galatasaray's stadium relocated. It's hard to be this culturally barren when you're basically a few stops away from Beyoğlu, the heart of the city, but as I always tell foreign artists and friends: remember, you only experience about 2% of Istanbul at most, and nobody takes you to areas like Mecidiyeköy.

A Hawk and A Hacksaw – Foni tu Argile

Rebetiko may be a Greek creation, but it has some of its roots in the Ottoman Empire and Istanbul, among other Greek and Anatolian towns. Songs of yearning, drug and alcohol usage, death, exile, disease and marriage are the main themes. Simply, it's the counterculture of the Empire. Foni tu Argile is a very well-known song about the seven hills of Istanbul, smoking hookahs and being jailed. It's original is in Greek, and my choice was initially Roza Eskenazi, the Istanbul-born Greek rebel whose songs were so edgy they were censored by Metaxas, the Greek dictator. However, there's also a famous Turkish version, and now this Balkan brass version, recently recorded by A Hawk and A Hacksaw, a band from New Mexico who play a modern variant of Balkan brass music. They also have a song called God Bless the Ottoman Empire. Talk about multiculturalism.

Ayyuka – Beni de Allah yaratti (Orhan Gencebay cover)

This is a more personal selection which reminds me of the winter of 2010. Ayyuka, one of the best of a new crop of local bands, made this song as a sort of in-house joke, but it became a hit in pre- and after-parties in several dens around town, and gets a "rewind" almost every time it's played. Mind you, it's not an original; it's a cover of another Orhan Gencebay song. Every year there's an argument among media personalities about how culturally devoid Arabesk has become, but a song like this proves how the genre still inspires the younger generation, in different forms and contexts.

Check out Undomondo's music blog