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 click for large imageHindustani 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


home | Sense of humor
 

last revised 21 September 2008