Here's a real labor of love, and venture back to the roots -- 24 tracks by 17 singers from the 1920s-1940s, the period when women singers first began performing in Istanbul, with the tracks drawn from the original metal masters, test pressings, and records owned by collectors. The liner notes are fascinating, sketching out the details of the recording industry in Turkey, and the currents of social history swirling around this pioneering generation of female performers in an Islamic society. Several of the singers would go ...
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Here's a real labor of love, and venture back to the roots -- 24 tracks by 17 singers from the 1920s-1940s, the period when women singers first began performing in Istanbul, with the tracks drawn from the original metal masters, test pressings, and records owned by collectors. The liner notes are fascinating, sketching out the details of the recording industry in Turkey, and the currents of social history swirling around this pioneering generation of female performers in an Islamic society. Several of the singers would go on to become film and theater stars as well. We're not exactly dealing with a crowded field here, so this is a definitive compilation almost by default. But the nice surprise is that listening to it isn't like wading through heavy ethnomusicology waters -- it's surprisingly light in tone, with small groups backing a revolving cast of singers to keep things from getting bogged down. The music revolves around two main poles, (serious scholars, cut some slack here, okay?): the spiraling-string-melodies-with-percussion ensemble sound recalls classic Arabic/Egyptian pop and Greek rembetika, although without the outlaw, hashish-and-hookers themes. Many of the lyrics here are nostalgic yearnings for the country village roots (especially for the region of Anatolia) that undoubtedly played well with recent emigrants to the big city. Faide Yildiz (vibrato in the voice and long flowing melodies), Fahriye Hanim (the first track is a shockingly up-tempo ripper, and the second doesn't slow down much), and Müşerref Hanim (sounds like an overwrought melisma on "Segah Gazel," but becomes gently lyrical when interplay, with a violin answering, is added to the mix), would fit more in the Egyptian camp. On the rembetika side fall Suzan Yakar Rutkay, rembetika legend Róza Eskenázi herself, Müzeyyen Senar (with bluesy trills and her voice prominent in the mix), and Safiye Ayla, the most famous singer here, who leads the way with her impressive sound, in various contexts, on all three of her pieces. But the most intriguing vocalist here is Zehra Bilir, her voice high in the mix, with unpredictable shifts in the arrangement, and a muted minor-key feel, who gives off a bluesy, mysterious aura to the performance. The liner notes add that Westerners have dubbed her the Edith Piaf of Turkey. Come to think of it, the lung-busting, long-held notes by Hamiyet Yüceses are pretty impressive, too. The disc does start wearing out its welcome -- Mahmur Handan Hanim sounds campy with a melody that would fit a '30s movie melodrama; the more classical and controlled Perihan Altindağ Sözeri is also more boring, and a pair of male-female duets arrive too late to revive interest. But that doesn't detract from the value of Women of Istanbul -- if there's any reason at all to think you'd be interested in this music, the compilation is worth it. That also goes for any fan of Turkish music and history, Armenian music, Greek rembetika, and even the Arabic music sphere aficionados. A fair amount of the music does sound similar; note that these women were contemporaries of Oum Kaltsoum when the Egyptian star was becoming a legend in the Arab world. There isn't that much context for Kaltsoum in terms of music released by female singers from Islamic societies (no matter how different the Turkish and Egyptian cultures may be) out there, but this compilation adds a little more to the genre with each track. ~ Don Snowden, Rovi
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