It’s the Journey Listening Post 358. Art and life merge in the luscious voice of Elif Sanchez, and her second album offers the privileged listener an international voyage, no passport required. Her music rests on a traditional foundation of family and schooling: Born...
Music for a Long Journey Listening Post 203. Olcay Bayir’s extraordinary second album begins with an endless walk on a narrow road, the trek drawn from an Alevi allegory of life’s journey. The artist has a parallel story: Born in southern Turkey, her musical Kurdish...
The Incredible Lightness of Gravity Listening Post 182. The singer-songwriter Fulya Özlem spent years studying and performing abroad, tracing a path that includes English, Scottish and Irish folk, tango, Latin jazz, bossa nova, French and Spanish Renaissance...
Music From Heartstrings Listening Post 176. Denied education, she taught herself. Denied a voice, she just sang louder. Mizgin, born in the Kurdish heartland of eastern Turkey, contracted polio at two and spent her early years at home, unable to go to school....
Living With Critics Listening Post 128. The Kurdish-Turkish singer-songwriter Ferhat Tunç has achieved artistic success, but he has also provoked criticism that goes well beyond negative reviews. Over the course of his 30-year career, he has been harassed, censored,...
In an Asia Minor Key Listening Post 29. Notwithstanding its name, the Turkish music form known as Arabesque has Byzantine and Balkan influences as well as Arabian. Over the past 20 years a new form, Arabesque-pop, has emerged with the addition of more Western...
