Turkish Pop

Turkey straddles Asia and Europe, and the music — at least to my ears — contains elements from both continents: Greek and Balkan melodies from the West, and Iraqi and Kurdish influences from the south and east. (There are popular Kurdish singers in Turkey despite political problems between the Kurds and the Turks.) But of course, in a cosmopolitan city like Istanbul, all of these elements fuse to evoke a funky yet haunting mood that that is entirely unique.

These tunes range from the 70s, with Baris Manco's psychedelic Anatolian funk, to more contemporary recordings by the likes of Sezen Aksu, who has remained one of the most adventurous Turkish artists over many decades. Her albums move from disco-inspired to collaborations with Goran Bregovi?, the Balkan composer. I have selected her more traditional tunes, though even these are pretty avant-sounding.

— DB

Click to launch "Engewal" video (50 MB total)

Jazz

There's almost no overarching reason why I picked the jazz tracks I did here. I left out tons of great stuff. I didn't include some of my favorite Miles Davis pieces from the 70s, for example, because each tune is half an hour long. Another time, perhaps. I kept one on the playlist — the long track from the album Get Up With It , called "He Loved Him Madly" — which I guess is a reference to Duke Ellington, though it sure doesn't sound anything like him.

Nowadays it's hard to imagine that some of these tunes, like the ones by Ellington, were hugely popular. Instrumental music was popular music, and you could dance to most of it. If we think about how marginal most instrumental and jazz music is today, it's hard to conceive that some of these composers were not just respected, but could attract big audiences. At yard sales and flea markets, I've occasionally run across 16mm soundies — the prototype of music videos — that often featured jazz or even Latin artists in the 40s and 50s. (They were played on movie jukeboxes in bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and other hang-out spots.) This implies that it was worth someone's time and effort to market these little films across the country, that there was in fact a demand.

Anyways, there's a lot of Thelonious Monk here, whose melodies and playing style are unlike anyone else's — they are borderline herky jerky, hardly smooth and loungey. The late Teo Macero, the producer who recorded some of these Monk tunes, famously created some of the later Davis records by splicing together moments from long improvisations. It was a way of bringing the tape splicing composition methods of Varèse and other classical contemporaries to the world of jazz. And it worked.

I agree with Macero that the recent trend of reissuing the full, unedited jams on box set releases doesn't do the artist any favors. I can't say that they shouldn't be heard — in an academic sense, it is interesting to see what Macero selected — but as a listening experience they mostly suck. Miles made plenty of records in that era — enough to listen to — and his US record company didn't even put some of them out. So it's a bit of too much too late.

— DB

African Popular Music Part 1: South of Sahara

This is an impossible task — to fit half a continent's music onto one radio playlist. Some countries are probably under represented. This is far from a complete or fair selection.

I listened to some of this music incessantly in the 80s when it started becoming more widely available. The first record I heard was a South African LP called 17 Mabone. The cover featured an illustration of an American muscle car with 17 (I counted them) headlights across the front. The tunes, mostly instrumentals, often began with an MC invoking the Indy 500 or something similar, and then the music would come in — accordions, saxes, electric guitars drums and basses. The cooking ingredients were familiar, but the recipe was new and different. I loved hearing familiar sounds and instruments approached in completely unfamiliar (to me) ways. It was incredibly tuneful too.

I loved the wacky cultural borrowings and mish mash, the electric guitars and the references to US car races. The cultural porridge was thick and mind bending. I soon heard a similar process happening in other areas. West Africans had heard classic Afro Cuban bands, so bands like Orchestra Baobab, who resurfaced a few years ago, transposed the keyboard and tres lines of the Cuban tunes to electric guitars. These montunos were given a new lilt and sparkle. The legendary Fela Kuti heard James Brown, Coltrane and the speeches of Angela Davis, and created a whole new groove — highlife — combined with unsparing criticism of local and global politics. Soukous, the style identified with the Congo that spread everywhere at one point, is claimed to be an adaptation of Cuban rumba lines, though I don't hear it — it's come too far for me to easily hear the connection.

Sunny Ade, the incredible bandleader, claimed middle of the road country crooner George Reeves as an influence! The use of Hawaiian lap steel guitar on his extended songs and those of Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Barrister (his track is 28 mins long!!!) was another unexpected pleasant surprise. On some Fuji tracks it is the sole harmonic instrument — the talking drums carry the rest!

Anyway, it was obvious that if Africa gave the world the roots of much of its popular music, the creolized and misegenated Diaspora was equally giving back. The flow of influence went and continues to go both ways.

One of the early South African collections I loved was called Rhythm of Resistance, as much of the music addressed the apartheid government then in existence. (There's a great DVD doc by the same name.) It's still a bit puzzling to me how people so oppressed could respond with such joy — some of the lyrics are pointed, but musically it bounces and explodes with pleasure.

I was crazy about Fela's jams, as were many others, and soon I was able to discern the various styles — and there are a lot of them. Many of the best musicians from the former Francophone colonies ended up in Paris, which by the mid-80s was a hotbed of Afro pop music with high production values. According to some folks, a few artists may have strived a little too hard for mass pop success at that time, but the idea was valid.

— DB

A New Hope

By the end of '08 Bush and his pirate crew will be almost gone — impotent and ineffective at least. Something to look forward to. We will be lucky if we survive the damage this gang has inflicted on the U.S. (the economy, R&D, etc. etc.) but let's be optimistic. It's a new year, and here is a pretty wide range of wonderful stuff I've stumbled across in the last few months. Some tunes might be carried over from the last Eclectic mix, but much of it is new, so new that some are not even available commercially yet! If this material is any indication, '08 is going to be a great year for music.

— DB