Music A truly evocative piece by Lisa Grossman regarding music in the Kurdish community of Istanbul:
"A bone-rattling wail pierces the silence of the room. Shivers run down my spine. It’s hard to believe that this primordial sound is emanating from the lips of the young man standing before me. He seems to be channeling something ancient and unearthly. Slowly, other sounds emerge to fill the space around his voice: a slow and rhythmic drumming, the trilling of a wooden flute, melancholy chords of the stringed saz and the fluttering of an oboe-like instrument called a mey. Then come the words – lyrics that were long relegated to the dustbin of cultural oppression. That is, until now."
It's hard to imagine what it must be like under a regime that would ban a form of music completely in an attempt to wipe it out. Insert flip comment here about Pete Waterman and Simon Cowell.

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