Beautiful sunny day after a week of cold and rain in İstanbul, so I got out and about with my camera and made you this mini travelogue slide-show, covering my neighborhood and the next two neighborhoods northward along the European side of the Bosporus. (Thanks to David Delany for the inspiration! Music credits: Yinon Muallem and friends, from his recent release Sultan için Klezmer, "Klezmer for the Sultan," KAF Müzik, Istanbul.) (P.S. "ARIT" is the American Research Institute in Turkey, where I'm staying.)
Monday, December 1, 2008
Lazy Autumn Sunday
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3 comments:
Awesome video! Tip: Dont eat shellfish out of the Bosphorus! That is so cool that you are going to hook up with Cenk and Jaynie. I know you will dig those 2... my inet connection is breaking up the music :-( but I can tell its something I like and want to be able to listen to for real... keep that up! WOW, that is amazing you studied w/Lou! Is he no longer in this world then? Is klezmer a commonly found instrument there? Is there a jewish population? Ok, I am a fan of EE...!! Have a blessed adventure!!! Mina
brilliant -- fevkülade! ethnomusicologist AND chronicler of a great world city -- what's next?
Thanks, Mina and Lily!
I don't really eat shellfish so I'm safe there, but I'll pass along the warning!
Saint Lou moved on to the next thing on Groundhog Day of 2003, having more than gotten his nickel's worth. We probably only hung out together 7 or 8 times, but they were formative experiences for me as a young composer.
"Klezmer" really just means music, though in America we have come to expect it to represent a certain kind of schmaltzy late-19th century Eastern European Jewish mariachi (my dad says, "Klezmer? That's just wedding music.") But here these guys (mostly Turks, but the leader being an Israeli guy who's been here for years) just mean "music," marked linguistically as having some Jewish element (though I couldn't say what, in the music itself, represents that). There are supposedly about 20,000 Turkish Jews still here, down from maybe ten times that many 100 years ago -- no tragedy befell them, though; they just thought their prospects were better in Seattle, L.A., Haifa, etc.
Thanks for your fandom! I'll say hi to Jaynie and Cenk for you!
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