#686: Music in Turkey

I'm sure there must have been some. I just can't remember much of it.
Outside of the ghostly, wailing, howling Islamic Call to Prayer, which happened 6 times a day starting around 5 a.m., I don't remember hearing much genuinely Turkish music. At one point I received as a present a cassette of a fairly modernized Turkish-woman ballad-singer, who sounded almost pleasant when I heard the music in someone else's apartment ... but on my own I couldn't get into it. For awhile I was disappointed by my failure to adapt & enjoy a new culture, this failure to blend in.
& then I stopped worrying about it. I figured if the music was good enough, IT would grab ME, as always. & that never happened.
My family & I were in Turkey for 2 years -- late 1989 thru late 1991, when the country was just starting to get "modernized." At least that's what the Turks thought. A Pizza Hut had opened in Ankara, & a brand-new McDonald's had just opened in the busiest central square downtown. We never went to either. They were always JAMMED with customers -- all the hip young Turks wanted to be in on Something New.
There were no CDs in Turkish stores back then, but cassettes were EVERYWHERE -- on the shelves of the smallest hole-in-the-wall stores, in the covered stalls of the open-air markets. I bought a Turkish-made cassette of Al Stewart's LAST DAYS OF THE CENTURY there, & though a friend thought it might have been "pirated," it looked fairly legit, complete with the legend "Made in Istanbul" on the cassette, & the official Enigma Records logo & all the artwork & etc. I remember playing the title song & "Red Toupee"; can't remember if I ever got to "Josephine Baker" or "Ghostly Horses of the Plains." But I've still got the tape around somewhere. It still works....
I remember a new Fleetwood Mac album being released just as we went overseas -- BEHIND THE MASK, which shockingly didn't include Lindsey Buckingham. I remember putting it on early in '90 & hoping it would somehow lift us out of the worst of the place, this new land of heat & dust & smog that we'd discovered on our arrival -- & the Mac album failed 2 deliver. It seemed awfully flat & dull, somehow. Or perhaps it was just the heat, I remember thinking. I never even got as far as the hypnotic "In the Back of My Mind," which likely would have woke me right up....
A year later, the same sort of flatness occurred with the Moody Blues' KEYS OF THE KINGDOM, which I had hoped would be a return to the level of their earlier, excellent THE PRESENT -- & which I played all the way through one especially hot summer afternoon while washing dishes. I failed to hear a single memorable melody. By then I was SURE it wasn't the Turkish heat.
There WAS some Good Stuff out there, though because we were so far from home, we had only the sketchiest sort of idea of what was rockin' U.S. ears. I 1st heard Rush's "Show Don't Tell" in Turkey, buying a cassette of their PRESTO cheap & hoping for a repeat of their earlier MOVING PICTURES. Nothing else on PRESTO grabbed me that much -- I don't know if I ever even finished it -- but the opener woke me up....
First heard Kate Bush's THE SENSUAL WORLD in Turkey. Mainly bought it for the devastating "This Woman's Work," & of course I'd heard Kate's 1st 3 albums 10 years earlier. I must've played "This Woman's Work" a lot -- it was my son's favorite song in the world when he was 2 years old.... There were some other good things on SENSUAL WORLD, like the steamy title song & the one where she dresses up like a rocket....
Thanks to the Base Exchange (a "department store" about the size of a big 7-11), we felt like we were fairly up-to-date on music while overseas -- I first saw CD's in Turkey, before I was really sure what the heck they were. When they arrived they came all at once, with no apparent rhyme or reason: Copies of Van Morrison's then-current ENLIGHTENMENT and HYMNS TO THE SILENCE sat right next to the Stories' excellent (& mostly overlooked) early-'70s ABOUT US. But it took me a couple of years before I was "converted" by the value of CDs -- I had to get back to America & notice the extra bonuses & previously-unreleased tracks before I began thinking these funny-looking tiny new discs might actually catch on....
Tho the BX kept us pretty well-stocked, there were some things that were still a mystery: We knew Sinead O'Connor suddenly Got Big seemingly out of nowhere, but it took YEARS before I heard the intensity in her voice in "Nothing Compares 2 U." For years I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about....
We knew INXS had become a pretty big deal back in the States, but we didn't know HOW big. We'd heard KICK, but we didn't realize what a string of hits they were cranking out Back Home.... Janet Jackson was suddenly a huge deal with RHYTHM NATION 1814 right after we arrived overseas. & none of us could figure out at the end of '91 what the heck a Nirvana was supposed to be....
One of my co-workers was a big Country fan, & was Pretty Country herself -- she actually USED words like "moseyin'" in casual conversation. Though she tended to listen to stuff like John Anderson's "Swingin'" (which I couldn't stand), she also had decent taste -- she was a big Steve Earle fan, & I first heard "Copperhead Road" coming out of her tape player at work....
There were other co-workers who were into stranger stuff, which I might have taken more notice of if I hadn't been distracted by a new country, new culture, writing my ass off for the base newspaper, etc. One was a broadcaster at a nearby base, who had two cats named Fripp and Eno. His casual mention of them one day made me pull the world's longest-delayed whiplash-double-take, & I said we needed to sit down & Talk Music at some point. & naturally, we never got the chance....
I even checked-out Turkish radio a few times, but there wasn't much out there: More wailing women singers, lots of atmospheric, droning Middle Eastern music.... The BBC World Service was out there somewhere, broadcasting faintly from a LONG way off -- they just reinforced the sense of foreignness we already felt. Home was literally 10,000 miles away. I've never felt so disconnected in my entire life. Not even when I lived in Wyoming....