sOUndS fROm IStAnbUl

Babylon rejoice.

The day before yesterday was a long day, i went early in the morning to the european site of istanbul, to meet Jason Carter in his hotel room. We recorded different bass tracks to two of his songs, it was really nice to do, a good atmosphere of working together, getting something good out of it, and at the same time a lot of fun. After that we went to see two movies about music, one about the return of musicians to afghanistan after the fall of the taliban, called Breaking the Silence: Music in Afghanistan, produced by Simon Broughton, and the other one about music in the islam, called Sufi Soul. Sufi is a kind of denomination within the islam where music is used a lot as part of their worship. Very similar to some christian denominations. It was nice to see, and also to meet Simon Broughton afterwords.
There was a very boring meeting about musicians for peace. But in the evening there was a great concert (to finish the Freemuse conference) in Babylon, the hippest club of Istanbul. So we went there, and at first there were three amazing woman singing turkish music, accompanied by local musicians, it was really great, they were doing a lot of different metres, like 5/8, 9/8, 6/8, 4/4, and even a lot of people in the audience were joining in as if it was the normallest thing to do, and probably it is for them. There were some other musicians from the conference who played, and Jason played a piece of his own, and than we played a piece of mine (from dust you’re created....) together with an Iranian vocalist, Marjan Vahdat. It was awesome, a voice that is really touching. After that she did an awesome performance together with her sister and brother-in-law. At the end we had a dinner at half past one in the night.
In the mean time I have made some contacts with some local people, trying to find a place to play together with local musicians with local instruments like the Darbuka or the Saz. Hopefully it will come to that point within a few days.
Yesterday I visited together with a South-african friend the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, which are both amazing, great architecture, impressive mosaics, beautiful decorations.
While travelling through Istanbul, there are still things that amaze me somehow. For example selling flowers on the highway, just in between the cars there is someone walking with a bunch of flowers trying to sell them to people who are trying to get home on a road that is supposed to be used by three cars next to each other, but is used by five or if possible six cars next to each other. Another time while cars are passing by at a speed of 80 km/h, a car pulled by a horse is at the same time moving on that highway. Police cars are always using their alarmlights, without the siren, even when there is no use in using it, which makes it probably of no use at all when it is really needed, (pretty strange). The turkish people are in general very friendly, and are very willing to help, but yesterday I was just walking on the street , and a shoe pollisher dropped one of his tools without realizing it, so I helped him, and than he offered me to pollish my shoes, but I was on my way to an appointment, so i didn’t have the time, so I said no, than he really seemed to get offended by my rejection. (although my shoes really need a pollish turn, so maybe next time when I am not in a hurry).
Greetings from the most romantic city of the world.

posted by bASSIc aRTs @ 12:05 AM