Busy Week + Happy Nevruz

Well worn from a busy week, I'm happy to report another 4 taksim recordings (by udi Mehmet Emin Bitmez and neyi Eymen Gürtan) and 8 analyses (by the same, and by tanburi Özer Özel), and a meeting with kemençe legend İhsan Özgen, not to mention further adventures with luthiers Mustafa and Ali. Had to postpone a recording session with tanburi Murat Aydemir and neyi Salih Bilgin, but that's a-coming, as well as one with yaylı tanbur player Vasfi Akyol, inşa'Allah. Whew!

March 21 marked the coming of spring (and the Persian/Kurdish/Central Asian new year "Nawruz/Nevruz," though I didn't see it widely celebrated here), and I'm glad for the change of season, though it's been cold and rainy, and we even got another 45 minutes of snow. Perhaps I'll ease into the transition by starting to go out in shorts and sandals with two sweaters and a muffler - a look not everyone can pull off, and I make no guarantees that I will succeed where others have failed, in this regard.

Anyway, I personally celebrated spring's nominal arrival Saturday night at a party/jam session in Göztepe, where my ud and I joined ney players Eymen and Cem, duduk player Özcan, and singer/hafız Huzeyfe with our host Ali on ringed daire. We played a couple of standard classical pieces then got down to the seriously fun business of trading taksim-s (improvisations - technically a gazel, when sung). Everyone was playing in top form, my own such being something of a pleasant surprise since I barely practice at all here, am not taking lessons, etc. There's something to be said for osmosis. In a related note, I had a moment this week when it occurred to me that I was actually speaking Turkish without sounding like Tarzan. That only took five months. I still have days when I sound like a complete bozo, but I'm beginning actually to suspect that after another five months I'll be pretty well fluent in this monster tongue.

So let's leave it there, with blessings upon all our monster tongues... Happy Spring!

(P.S. I'm just guessing about the links above that are supposed to go to YouTube - it's still a forbidden site here, and I can't get at it even with filter breakers - if the links don't work, I suggest Googling the name of whatever it is and seeing what you can find.)