Broad tastes
Aka was interested in many kinds of world music, though not
Euro-American concert hall music as far as I knew. He told me of exchanging
riffs in a private session with jazz trumpeter Clark Terry, for example,
during an Istanbul visit by Terry (see Aka's jazz
recordings).
One day, I told Aka about the hours-long improvisations by
Hindustani musicians in the old days. I said it seemed plausible that
Turkish musicians in Ottoman times might have played lengthy improvisations
well into the night for their court patrons. Aka looked thoughtful for a
few moments. Years later, when I heard his Playasound CD (left) (Click for
larger image), I suspected that
his extraordinarily long Rast taksim of more than twenty-three minutes might
have come out of that earlier conversation.
Rast
excerpt from Playasound CD
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