Concert Review: Turkish Woodstock II, 7/3/10

Last year’s “Turkish Woodstock” was sold out practically before the show started: if you include the thousands who couldn’t get inside New York’s Central Park Summerstage arena, a safe guess is that there were about 20,000 people milling about. This year’s “Turkish Woodstock II” a.k.a. Istanbulive didn’t appear to reach peak capacity until well after 4 PM. Both 2009 and 2010 shows blended east and west, although the segues last year (the NY Gypsy All-Stars, clarinet legend Husnu Senlendirici, Painted on Water and MFO, with a cameo from the Brooklyn Funk Essentials) were more seamless. But this year’s still made for a good, eclectic bill. The concert began with a single foreboding, somewhat funereal traditional song by Emrah Kanisicak, backed by oud, percussion, bass, drums and accordion. Chanteuse Sukriye Tutkun then took over centerstage. She has a lovely voice, exemplary range and a completely casual, warmly familiar stage presence. It was as if she was singing in her living room (ok, not her living room, but maybe from her fire escape – it was a brutally hot afternoon). Calmly and methodically, she ran through a selection of understated, Middle Eastern-tinged ballads and a slinky pop song that evoked Henry Mancini. The songs were all seemingly Mancini-era: the crowd knew most of them; a few sang along.

Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions – Ersahin on tenor sax, Alp Ersonmez on electric bass, Turgut Bekoglu on drums and Izzet Kizil on percussion were next, a short, rewarding day’s journey into night. Ersahin, impresario of well-loved East Village jazz oasis Nublu – is at his best when he mines a nocturnal vibe, and he worked his way down. He’s all about melody – it wasn’t til the third song of his set that he worked any kind of ornamentation, in this case an evil little trill, into his playing. Ersonmez matched him, sometimes pedaling a note or, occasionally, a chord, for what felt like minutes on end while the percussion clattered hypnotically and Ersahin scoped out the territory. Chipper and cheery, he worked permutations on a series of catchy hooks much like JD Allen will do, keeping each piece to a comfortable four minutes or so. They got better and better as they went along, Ersahin introducing a sly, late-night, understatedly simple bluesy tinge. Ersonmez introduced one with a fast percussive line that mimicked an oud while Ersahin ran circles around a bouncy spy theme, followed by a trance-inducing percussion solo. They went out on a joyous note with the reggae-tinged Freedom, pulsing along with a wickedly catchy three-chord chorus. Anyone who misses the late, great Moisturizer should discover Ersahin: he has the same irrepressible, irresistibly playful sensibility.

By the time moody rock quartet Duman – Turkish for “smoke” – took the stage, the arena looked close to capacity. They got a lot more singalongs than Tutkun – the young crowd, restless to this point, were suddenly one with the music. Turkish lyrics aside, Duman have the same memorable jangly and sometimes chromatically tinged sound that’s been all the rage in Latin America since the days of popular Mexican rockers Caifanes. Add some terse Johnny Marr cross-string guitar work, with just a hint of surf, or sometimes riff-driven garage rock, and that’s their terrain. What was most impressive was that despite their monochrome sound, all the songs didn’t sound the same: Duman are not boring. One anthem began almost ghostly before its chorus exploded out of nowhere; another sounded like the Smiths’ What Difference Does It Make, through a glass darkly. Brooding verses gave way to upbeat, hook-driven choruses, and vice versa. The band’s two guitarists traded a few solos, including one that they might have learned back in the day when they might have been playing Hotel California for their friends. There was another act scheduled to play afterward, but with a completely different demographic and a pop feel as different from this as Ersahin, and Tutkun before him, had been.

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The Lucid Culture Interview: Painted on Water

Painted on Water is the innovative collaboration of two of the most pioneering stars in Turkish music, chanteuse Sertab Erener and guitarist/composer Demir Demirkan. A mix of traditional Anatolian melodies, American jazz, rock and funk, their brand-new self-titled album just came out this month. Lucid Culture had a few questions for the duo in advance of their live show at the “Turkish Woodstock” at Central Park Summerstage at 3 PM this coming Saturday, June 27:

 

LC: Whose idea was Painted on Water? 

 

Demir: We came up with the idea of creating a project based on Anatolian musical elements that we can present to a non-Anatolian audience, together with Sertab. We wanted to bring out the large spectrum of musical elements of Anatolian music to the world stage so that it wouldn’t be too foreign but still unique to a wider audience. And we wanted our subject matter to be based on some of the principles of Anatolian and Eastern wisdom like sufism and taoism. Impermanence being one of them actually was the name root of the band. “Painted On Water” is the perfect metaphor for impermanence. The lyrics: “You and me is a long lost story painted on water…” reminds that our lives are colorful paint-drops and images which will be lost and forgotten in time. This is a rather positive point of view – no matter how impermanent our lives are, we still have to paint or picture on this canvas of life with attention and awareness.

 

LC: Who writes what? Sertab, are you the lyricist and Demir, you’re the composer, or do you mix and match?

 

Sertab: Demir wrote the lyrics to half of the songs and the rest were written by Phil Galdston.

 

Demir: I did the arrangements and harmonizing in the songs. In fact, there is no vertical harmony in Anatolian music, it’s a different system. I had to adapt it to a western system and build it harmonically first. The album was co-produced by Jay Newland, and he also mixed some of the songs. Some other material was recorded and mixed by Michael Zimmerling.

 

LC: Many of these songs are updates of Turkish folksongs – are these well known in your home country or have you uncovered some great obscurities? 

 

Demir:  Aegean Bride, the instrumental is actually an instrumental folk theme that I don’t think many people know about. We dug into the archives of a collector from Istanbul. We listened to more than a thousand recordings, some being so seriously old that you can hardly catch the melody. Some songs contain the whole melodies of the folk songs, some partial, and some I’ve written completely.

 

Sertab:  We had to play around with some of the melodies to adapt them into English language. Every language has its own musicality. Melodies modified themselves a little bit with the English lyrics.

 

LC: The cd opens with an Al DiMeola cover? Demir, are you responsible for this?

 

Demir: Yes! We asked Al DiMeola if he would play three songs in the album and then Mike Stern and I played one the songs before he came to the studio, and it sounded good. So while Al was on the way to the studio, I came up with the idea to open the album with a two-guitar piece and have Al DiMeola play both. I finished the piece just before he came in to the studio and I handed over the notes to him. Sometimes your heart and mind becomes one and you accomplish things that you couldn’t be able to if you have a very close deadline. Of course when he played it, it’s magic, it turns into music!

 

LC: The jazzier stuff on the cd carries a great deal of familiarity – it seems that you two grew up with jazz. True or not?

 

Demir: I studied jazz part-time in college in Ankara, Turkey and then some more in Hollywood. Honestly, jazz never has been my “real thing.” I know the idea, some of the things I write might fall close to the genre but real jazz performers play them and make it into real jazz. When I perform them, they come out mostly blues or rock. On the other hand I like listening to jazz.

 

LC: Nothing But to Pray is my favorite on the album. It’s especially haunting. What are the origins of this song, and what have you added to the original?

 

Sertab: I applied my own singing style to the melody. I wanted it to sound unique without falling into any style or category.

 

Demir: I harmonized the melody in away that I believe fit with the story line. I felt like I was creating a context where the event was happening. It’s really strange when you harmonize a melody that doesn’t have any. The melody begins to change meaning with different harmonies. Maybe some other person would use different harmonies and the whole thing would mean something else. To give a literal example – a bird was flying before the sunrise; a bird was flying before the sunrise over the silent battlefield…you know what I mean? The setting changes the meaning.

 

LC: What does your song Shehnaz on Shiraz mean?

 

Demir: The original name of this song is Sehnaz Longa. Sehnaz is a female name. Longa is a certain instrumental style in Ottoman music where instruments play fast passages in unison, roughly. I thought I’d swing this melody and harmonize it and put walking bass lines and improvisations in it. When I started swinging it I thought “Oh Shehnaz must be drunk!” Then I fantasized about a beautiful harem lady who’s getting drunk and dancing. She would be drinking wine and the wine would be a shiraz. So, that’s the story…Shehnaz on Shiraz!

 

LC: Will someone be doing real live Turkish ebru waterpainting via projection onstage at your Summerstage show like you have at your club concerts?

 

Sertab:  Unfortunately not at the Summerstage, because we will be playing in daylight and the projection doesn’t work…

 

LC: The bill you’re playing on is amazing, some of the most innovative and important artists in Turkey playing together for the first time in New York – is this an everyday kind of program in Turkey or would it be as special an event there as it is here?

 

Sertab: There are only a small number of festivals in Turkey, and they are mostly rock festivals. Normally this lineup is one that you couldn’t come across with. This is also an unusual situation for Turkey.

 

Demir: I have always liked MFO and I know them personally. Great guys besides being great musicians. It’s gonna be my first time sharing the stage with them at an event. I knew Husnu before he made his solo career. He plays clarinet incredibly but not a lot of people know, I actually witnessed this in one of my TV music recordings that he plays the trumpet in such a way that I’d never heard. He plays Turkish music on trumpet!

 

LC: Will this be like a bunch of old friends hanging out, or do you the various bands involved – MFO, Hüsnü Senlendirici etc. – all travel in different circles?

 

Sertab: Well, we are living in New York now, half the year, so we’ll walk to the event from our home in Upper West Side. We were at a dinner last night with everyone but everyone travels separately I think. Half of MFO isn’t here yet. When we get together, it’s a lot of laughing and great times!

 

LC: Anita Baker’s coming to town, is that something you’d be into, or way too mainstream for you?

 

Demir: I would love to see her but I’ll be in Turkey. July 27th right?

 

LC: Yeah. That was a trick question actually.

 

Sertab: It is actually too mainstream for me but I always like to listen to high class performance singers.

 

Painted on Water play Central Park Summerstage this Saturday as part of the “Turkish Woodstock” festival Istanbulive with Turkish rock legends MFO, iconic clarinetist Hüsnü Senlendirici and the NY Gypsy All-Stars. Doors are at 3, admission is free and early arrival is extremely recommended.