DİYARBAKIR EYVAN GECELERİ

 

DİYARBAKIR EYVAN GECELERİ

NIGHTS OF  DİYARBAKIR EYVAN

 Koçer Production, 2000

This tape was produced by Ali Aktaş who was also the leader of the band. 13 musicians and singers are present on this recording with bağlama, keyboards, kaval, mey, nagara and davul. The singers perform in ''koro'' but A. Aktaş and Remzi Bal have 3 songs each as soloists. Such a band could be qualified as folkloric but as it is the case for many bands in Turkey they are close enough to the folk tradition. The keyboard is used mostly as a bass-drone and is discreet enough.

Diyarbakır is located in South-East Turkey where Kurdish people are still a majority. But all the songs are sung in Turkish although some of the tunes sound Kurdish. The repertoire is made of traditional songs from the area, Erzurum, Urfa, Central Anatolia and compositions by Pir Sultan Abdal and Celal Güzelses.

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Afghanistan

 

AFGHANISTAN

Enregistrements de Michel et Gérard MONTESINOS

Recordings  by M. and G. Montesinos

Disques Alvarès, no date, LD 491

Afghanistan has been very attractive to globe-trotters and sound hunters since the 50s and a certain number of LPs like this one were produced in France. Here two brothers went to record folk musicians mostly Uzbek with some Hazara and Pashtoon examples. Due to the important part of music in traditonal Afghani life it was possible and maybe easy to find good performers among adults but also among teenagers. There are no information about the Montesinos brothers but they certainly loved what they found and this LP is quite nice. Nevertheless, we miss the names of the songs and their content as well as information about the performers. This is the limit of such an album; fortunately there are very good albums (mostly on CD) made by musicologists and the present album is complementary to those scientific works. The notes are in French only.  

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Kinross Festival

 

SCOTS SONGS AND MUSIC

Springthyme Records, 1974, SPR 1001

Recorded in September 1973 at the Kinross Festival this LP features some of the great names of the Scottish tradition like Flora MacNeil, Charlie Murray or Tom Anderson and some of the revivalists of the time like the band The Clutha or the fiddler Aly Bain. Organised by the Traditional Music and Song Association of Scotland at the time the Kinross Festival is still there on a larger basis. There is another LP about that festival with the number 2. 

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Eddie Cahill

 

AH ! SURELY  EDDIE CAHILL
Accompanied by Mick Moloney
TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC 

Shanachie, 1979, 29014

Born in 1929 in Co. Sligo, E. Cahill left Ireland for America in 1950. The notes written by M. Moloney give a good picture of Eddie and his musical background on the back cover.I'd like to say that Cahill was one of the very first flute players I heard with that old flute playing style ie with a pulsating rhythm very common in Sligo and nearby. But I think the first one I heard was Séamus MacMathuna from Clare. That style influenced me a lot and is still part of my own flute playing.
M. Moloney plays guitar, bouzouki and mandolin and he recorded Eddie at home in Philadelphia between Octobre 1977 and April 1978. This explains why the sound is different from one track to another.
E Cahill was not very proeminent among other flute players but he was an inspiration for me and Moloney was a hundred per cent right to save some of Eddie's music for us. 

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Turquie

 

FOLKLORE ET MUSIQUES DE L'UNIVERS

TURQUIE

FOLKLORE AND MUSICS OF THE UNIVERSE

TURKEY

Disques BAM, ?, LD 5739

This series ''Folklore et Musiques de l'Univers'' was a good way to know a bit more about remote musical cultures although the people who recorded in the field were not always real connoisseurs. But generally speaking it was good enough for me; I was 10 or 11 years old when I got this LP for Christmas. The guy who collected the material was Merry Ottin, a French writer who knew enough about Turkish history. He divided the LP in three parts : Mehter, Mevlevi and Folklore.
Two tracks are particularly interesting : track A4 is named ''dance of  Kars'' and Ottin speaks about Russian and Turkish influences while for me that music sounds completely Armenian. It shows how heavy the Turkish propaganda was about the ethnic cleansing in the area during the first World War and how well accepted it was by foreigners  who wouldn't or couldn't question it publicly. But the players had probably introduced themselves as Turks. Nevertheless the term ''armenian'' was taboo at the time as it is still the case now. I think I got the LP  around 1969 so the recordings were conducted at the end of the 60s maybe. The other track is A9 about fiddle music by some refugee or descendant of refugees from Crimea. It is possible now to listen to CDs about this fiddle music but at the time it was quite new to me.
The other tracks are interesting too as the tracks about the resurgence of the Janissaries and their band of zurnas and davuls. 

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