TATAVLA

 TATAVLA / ΤΑΤΑΥΛΑ

Olympic, 1969, BL 1026

The  Greek ''sub-title'' on the cover means : dances and music from the famous Constantinopolitan neighborhood with laterna, accordion and folk orchestras. 

Constantinople/Istanbul has kept some of its Greek inhabitants since the fall in 1453 to the Ottomans until now. I don't know how many Sambuliots from Greek extraction still live there, probably a few compared to the numbers estimated in the 19th century (20 000) when this area was known as a Greek-Armenian neighborhood. I believe a good part of the community left the city in the 1950's after pressure and harassment from the Turkish government. Anyway, it was a great place for Greek culture and very important for the Greeks living in the country who came to Constantinople for economical reasons. The Greek text of this album compares Tatavla to the Piraeus near Athens for is role of cultural and economical pole. The Turkish name for the area is Kurtuluş (meaning ''liberation'').

This album is entirely instrumental with a duet accordion and a plucked strings instrument I don't identify (a mandolin or a baglama ?), violin in Oriental style, electrified bouzouki. To me the tracks A5 and B2 are the best with some laterna playing echoing the atmosphere of Tatavlian streets where this mechanical piano was very much appreciated around 1900.  This tradition still exists in Istanbul with Turkish-Greek repertoire and in Athens. Track B6 is a hot tsifteteli with clarinet, violin, qanun solos.
The duet with the chromatic accordion reminds me of Klezmer music at times and the repertoire sounds a bit Romanian. Maybe the influence of Askenazi Jews fleeing the pogroms in Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century who choosed to go to Istanbul rather than migrating to Western Europe. 
A bit more information about the composers and musicians on https://www.discogs.com/Various-%CE%A4%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1%CF%8D%CE%BB%CE%B1/release/8340364

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