KHAARTOUM SINGS and PLAYS ENGLISH SUBTITLED Turkish Ottoman style: 'YAKTILAR HALİMİMI' or 'THEY BURNED MY HALIM' plus made a bit of a video and added some ENGLISH SUBTITLES. The SONG has many QUALITIES of TURKISH MUSIC. It is a MELANCHOLIC TONE POEM of SAD POWERLESSNESS addressed to the SELF with a SENSE of SUFI ISLAM IDEOLOGY. The LAMENT is the FEUDAL CULTURE where INDIVIDUALS have FEW CHOICES and CONFORMITY is DEMANDED from ALL.
The METRE is 5/8 which is common to TURK, GREEK and PERSIAN music giving an 'UNSTABLE' IRREGULAR PULSE with LONG and SHORT PHRASE LENGTHS.
The LYRICS and LYRIC CONCEPT was DIFFICULT to get into ENGLISH!...I've done my best! The LYRICS are quite METAPHORICAL about not being able to LOVE who ONE LOVES and how the FEUDAL SOCIETY THREAT is there to be CARRIED OUT on ANY PERSON who intended to BREAK the FEUDAL RULES.
'THEY BURNED MY HALIM' is from the 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR' ['LIGHT RISES IN THE EAST'] 1995 album by TURKISH SINGER/COMPOSER: SEZEN AKSU [b.1954]. The ALBUM was TURKEY'S FIRST HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL FUSION project RECORDING SEZEN AKSU'S IDIOMATICALLY WRITTEN popular music pieces resembling TURKISH FOLK IDIOM.
Interestingly enough, TURKISH PEOPLE often say that 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR' is one of their LEAST FAVOURITE ALBUMS of SEZEN AKSU. AKSU'S FAN BASE tends to be EDUCATED CITY TURKS with some LEFT WING POLITICAL LEANINGS. SEZEN'S ALBUMS were often of a new SYNTHESIS of WEST-TURKISH POPULAR MUSIC which REVOLUTIONISED a lot of EUROPEAN POPULAR MUSIC. The 'LIGHT RISES IN THE EAST' is a MAGNIFICENT and UNIQUE PROJECT but one which carried the MORTAL SIN of CELEBRATING 'EASTERN CULTURE' and not the 'beloved' WESTERNISATION.
EASTERN MUSICS are often wrongly equated by EDUCATED CITY AUDIENCES as 'COUNTRYSIDE' or 'IGNORANT BUMPKIN' CULTURE. Being only two generations from the COUNTRYSIDE themselves, a lot of CITY PEOPLE feel deep FEAR of any CLUE of their not-so-long-ago RURAL FARMING LIFE, so 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR', even in its SPLENDOUR , promotes something that CITY TURKS are often UNCOMFORTABLE with...So the ALBUM has become a 'FLOP' in TURKEY. However, as an INTRODUCTION to the BRILLIANCE that TURKS have with MUSIC, SEZEN AKSU'S 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR' is probably the GREATEST GIFT a FOREIGN LISTENER could FIND to see the TRUE GENIUS of TURKISH MUSICIANS! Strange paradoxes of TURKEY!
The ARRANGING is an UNORTHODOX MIX of WESTERN ORCHESTRA mixed with TURKISH, EAST EUROPEAN, BULGARIAN, ARABIC, ARMENIAN and GREEK MUSICS. This was also the FIRST TIME that a HI-TECH EUROPEAN RECORDING STUDIO was used as a 'TOOL OF CREATION' too in combination with TOP ORCHESTRATORS.
A GREAT INTRODUCTION for FOREIGNERS for TURKISH MUSIC is that SEZEN AKSU album: 'THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST' or 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR' has UNIQUE and BREATHTAKING STUDIO SONGS that could really ONLY EVER have been MIXED TOGETHER by the TRADITIONAL 'CULTURE-MIXERS', the TURKS, who DERIVE their CULTURAL HERITAGE from exactly from CULTURAL 'MELTING POT' to make a new culture...TURKEY! I hope you ENJOY my bit of fun with TURKEY'S MUSICAL DIVA: SEZEN AKSU!
Link to the FULL ALBUM 'THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST' or 'IŞIK DOǦDAN YÜKSELİR' by SEZEN AKSU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGId9GpIgbk
Original song by SEZEN AKSU: 'YAKTILAR HALİMİMI' or 'THEY BURNED MY HALIM'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bg06jE6ymU
PS Read more about SEZEN AKSU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sezen_Aksu
