…tonight these uncultured ears hear some mad psychedelic wangling of traditional Eastern form through a bedazzled elektro bağlama, endless driving rhythm, the downright folksy strains of a German chanteuse, a reverb-drenched whistle or two and somebody quite at home behind a noise-box, making funny noises surrounded by cymbals.
Baba Zula @ Babylon, Istanbul, 05/03/09
I don’t get it. Well, I do a bit, but then a sweet Turkish girl is charitable enough to yell occasional translations into the side of my head as downright troubadorial favourite-uncle type Murat Ertel, collected in defiance of his panto genie stage clobber, talks, does a wordy number, and talks again. Something about the societal smothering of woman (they don’t like it), multi-culturalism (they love it), the political flag-waggle currently gripping Istanbul and, in a turn I’ll probably never completely understand, leeks (so prevalent are they in fact, that a chap is hired to lower one on a string from the rafters to confuse me).
All in a day’s work, one suspects, for celebrated (in Fatih Akın’s attention-worthy Crossing The Bridge: The Sound Of Istanbul, for starters) ‘oriental dub’ weirdo’s Baba Zula, playing tonight to a smokey little crowd who dance and dance and dance. Heads bob, arms flail Morrissey-style toward the heavens; clearly we are no longer in England.
What sounds and sights this room have grown up with; well I can only rub myself and imagine, but tonight these uncultured ears hear some mad psychedelic wangling of traditional Eastern form through a bedazzled elektro bağlama, endless driving rhythm, the downright folksy strains of a German chanteuse, a reverb-drenched whistle or two and somebody quite at home behind a noise-box, making funny noises surrounded by cymbals. During the headier pieces, it’s all one can do to keep an eye on the nearest exit in case something bursts into flame.
The evening’s fireworks seem to peak when a gaggle of lurchers (as in the breed of dog!? Bloody heck… Ed) are pulled on stage by a resident belly dancer (with less belly than I’ve been led to fantasise endlessly about in my lonely teenage bedroom). Another highlight is The Voice Of God, quickly revealed to be Pam St Clement-esque Italo-Turk actress Serra Yilmaz, who makes it across the smoky venue, mic in hand, soliloquising all the way to be brunted down Babylon’s peculiar catwalk of a stage. Amusing, it is. And now, sat in a disgustingly commercial coffee outlet in Islington, surrounded by faces as pinched as my lovely own, this all seems to have been some weird fanciful dream. Hmm…
Words: Gavin
Picture: Burçe