1.

Inspector Nevzat, the lead detective in The Gardens of Istanbul, enjoys listening to music, so a number of performers get a mention in the course of the book.

Among them, Zeki Muren... That name rings a bell, I thought. And yes, we first came across this flamboyant performer in the museum in Bursa, during our first ever trip to Turkey.


Bursa, Turkey, 2016



Born in Bursa in 1931, Muren was a singer, songwriter, actor, and poet. He died in 1996.





I defy you to listen to Simdi uzaklardasin, and not be transported to another age...: "Now you are far away; my heart is filled with pain..."

Or there's this one, with its jaunty-but-melancholy waltz melody, and its charming-but-possessive lyrics:

Don't let any other dream enter your eyes...
Don't let anyone else see you and fall in love with you before me...
On the roads that come to you, always wait for me.





2.

In all the flurry of winter in Europe, I somehow missed that a third StoryLearning Spanish serial was under way. So I've been catching up. (They're now into Series 4, so I'm really way behind, but it's Series 3 that I'm talking about here.)

It's about Julio, a 50-something Colombian guy who has been edged out of his law firm by younger, flashier, pushier people, and embarks, by way of compensation, on a journey around Latin American. An amateur musician himself, he is reconstructing the route his grandfather took back in the 1930s when he played for a tango orchestra. This is probably my favourite series so far, because it has introduced me to so much great Latin American music.



Ah, the rhythms...

This, with its gentle syncopation, is Luna Tucumana, written and sung by Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-92), an Argentinian singer, songwriter, and guitarist:

I don’t sing to the moon
just because she shines
I sing to her because she knows
of my long trek...
We are similar in something,
moon of loneliness,
I go walking and singing
which is my way of shining.



And this -- lilting, quite exquisite -- is Zamba para olvidar, written and sung by Daniel Toro (born 1941), another singer/songwriter from Argentina. A zamba, or so I read, is a traditional dance/music style from his country, and this one I find very moving:

I don't know why you came back
If I was starting to forget.
I don't know if you know it already --
I cried when you went away.
I don't know why you came back;
What pain it gives me to remember...



Or there's this tumbling little number, Oropel, sung by Colombian musicians Rodrigo Silva (1945-2018) and Alvaro Villalba (1931-2021). Oropel is tinsel, and the sweet tune conceals quite a cynical message:

If you bet on love, how many betrayals,
how many sorrows, how many disappointments
you are left with when love moves away,
as in the blackest nights without moon or stars...

Let's take this drink, drink a toast to life,
Drink a toast to life, because everything is tinsel...



Finally, for a glimpse of the man who embodied the "soul of the tango style", charismatic and tragic Argentinian performer Carlos Gordel (1890-1935), try Tomo y obligo, another desperate tale of heartbreak:

Drink with me, and if my voice gets choked up every now and then when I sing,
It's not that I'm crying because she cheats on me,
I know that a man mustn't cry...