sOUndS fROm IStAnbUl

One concert to go in Kyrgyzstan.

The band I join for this period is called, Storybox, and it actually always exists of Charles de Buerger (vocal/guitar) from New Zealand, and his wife Rebekah (vocal) and for this time with Chris Middleton on drums, and myself on bass. And here in Kyrgyzstan we play also with a Saxophonist (Serik) from Kazachstan, but living here in Kyrgyzstan, and a local keyboard player, Arkadi. On the same time we have local support-act, which exists of two rappers and a guitarplayer/vocalist, called NL, for most of the time they played with tracks, but the last few concerts I joined on bass in some songs. The songs we play as Storybox are mostly songs of Charles, and some covers from Crowded House, Eva Cassidy. The places en venues we play are different, sometimes it’s a theater or cinema, and sometimes a church, and when we discover that there hasn’t been too much promotion we try to play outside, to get some more audience, which means that sometimes it’s quiet cold to play, but even inside the buildings where we play it is most of the time not very warm.
Last week we played outside under the arms of Lenin (statue). The infrastucture still looks very communistic, a lot of statues that remind of the cocmmunistic regime.
For those who do not know a lot about Kyrgyzstan, it’s a country with about 4,5 million people. The capital city is Bishkek, (which looks more like a conglomerulation of small cities) It’s surrounded by Kazachstan, China, Turkmenistan & Oezbekistan The climat is a land climat, there are quiet a lot of mountains with eternal snow. But at the moment it’s not that cold, yesterday we made a walk, where i was only wearing a t-shirt. The people are a mix of ethnic kyrgyz people which have a mongolian look, and than there are the russian looking people. In the past the mix was about 50/50, but now the majority is ethnic kyrgyz (80%).

We went for three to four days into another area of the country, we played in three places around a big lake. It was nice to experience life in a Kyrgyz family/house. A big hospitality, but to get more of how everything goes, it’s just the missing link of the language, only a very few speak english in a understandable way. The food is quiet heavy in general, at every dish there is something with meat, during breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The area around the lake was nice to see, mountains on all sides of the lake. The water is quiet clear. They say it is a kind of touristic area, probably more in the summer. The ‘beaches’ are more stoney than sandy. And i think you can make a lot of money with gardening, because almost everywhere green is growing on places where it ‘shouldn’t’. The traffic is is like in a lot of third world countries, really a kind of mess, but everyone seems to find there way. On one place we had to stop because they were throwing down stones from the mountain to prevent landslides. Probably the stones they could fall by them self at a later moment. Direction signs are quiet rare, and street names I didn’t see up to now.
Last night there was again a small earth quake, I was still awake, and it felt a little bit like someone moved my bed, but there was no one around. But this one was even smaller than the one thas was there last time. They say it is very rare an earthquake, but in two weeks time already three small ones, doesn’t seem rare to me. But if I say that I am living six meters below sealevel behind some ‘dijken’, they think that I am crazy. Istanbul, where i will be staying for a big part of the coming weeks, is located just between two cracks underneath the skin of mother earth. Scientist expect that there will be a major earthquake within 20-30 years.
Today I made some pancakes to have little bit of a lighter food. The last few days we tried to order them at restaurants where we were, although it was on the menu, they didn’t have it. Enjoy your meal, because lots of people are hungry today and will be tomorrow.

posted by bASSIc aRTs @ 8:37 AM