Turkish band BaBa ZuLa has released its second single ‘Çöl Aslanlari‘ (Desert Lions), extracted from forthcoming direct-to-disc album ‘Hayvan Gibi’. The piece combines hypnotic traditional percussion, dubwise experimentalism and brooding electric saz (Turkish lute).
Çöl Aslanlari’ was originally composed for a 1998 stage production of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. ‘Hayvan Gibi’ (to act with the natural grace of an animal) is a concept album with each song named for a different creature.
Founded in 1996 after the breakup of experimental band ZeN, BaBa ZuLa began by scoring for film, before developing a style that pushed the classic Turkish psychedelic sound of the 1970s forward into the 21st century.
The band are led by electric saz player Osman Murat Ertel, who grew up in the creative musical environment of 1960s Istanbul. It was an era of innovation, when a new wave of musicians such as Erkin Koray and Barış Manço, and groups like Moğollar and Bunalım, were fusing the ancient folklore sounds of rural Anatolia with international psychedelic rock to create the musical fusion now known as Anadolu psych.
Author: World Music Central News Room
World music news from the editors at World Music Central