While she continues to be relatively unknown in the West, over the last decade the profile of Turkey’s protest-songstress Selda Bağcan has steadily grown with the increase in diligent listenership for recovered global treasures. Back in 2006 the Finders Keepers label reissued her eponymous 1976 debut album, and after a long delay, on February 4th her follow-up Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi will be freshly and easily available on LP via the Spanish imprint Pharaway Sounds.
She’s been called the Joan Baez of Turkey, though it feels more appropriate to portray Selda Bağcan without Western associations. “Bitter sound of the Turkish People,” a descriptor her fans (and later Selda herself) adopted to encapsulate her music’s unabashed folk intent, serves the purpose pretty well, and the phrase also relates to the considerable troubles the singer-guitarist has endured for her activism.
Between 1981 and 1984, Selda was imprisoned three times, and she additionally lost the right to travel abroad until 1987. These actions were the direct result of the Turkish coup d’état of 1980, an event that signified a major shift away from the freedom of expression fostered by the region’s years of multi-party democracy.
It was an environment that produced the fruits of Anatolian Rock, a scene that continues to be dominated by the work of prolific guitarist Erkin Koray, said to be the first person to play rock ‘n’ roll in Turkey, though by the late ‘60s he was but one artist amongst many in a burgeoning field. In 2001 Dionysus Records subsidiary Bacchus Archives assembled a 22-track compact disc Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock Music 1966 to 1975 Vol. 1, a document that served as this writer’s first deep drink from the Anatolian Rock cup.
Along with two cuts by Koray, it shed major illumination upon a generous and stylistically diverse selection of artists, and if the music’s reemergence came attached with trace elements of Exoticism, close listening proved the endeavor to be thoroughly legitimate in qualitative terms. Unfortunately, it seems that a second volume has yet to be issued.
But more suitable to the needs of this review would be German label Q.D.K. Media’s ’03 entry in their multi-volume survey of worldwide psychedelia, the Love, Peace & Poetry – Turkish Psychedelic Music LP. And this is specifically due to the presence of Selda; the compilation opens with “Bundan Sonra” from Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi and also includes the simply fabulous “İnce İnce Bir Kar Yağar,” likely the very best track from her debut long-player.
However, we shouldn’t be quick to paint her as just a member of the whole Anatolian Rock bag, or even as a Turkish rocker with protest and social commentary on her mind, for even without the benefits of language comprehension her early singles make it explicitly clear that she emerged from a far more straightforward folk tradition.
With just an acoustic guitar and a set of powerful vocal chords, on songs such as “Kâtip Arzuhâlim Yaz Yâre Böyle” and “Maphushane İçınde Mermerden Dırek” (both from a 1971 single), Selda conjured a potent mixture of beauty, intensity and rawness; all familiar elements to folk music of any global persuasion, as was her directness of emotion, with the whole greatly emphasizing the depth of her non-pop origins.
Without the benefit of lyrical comprehension it’s impossible to fully absorb the heft of Selda’s early work, but it’s also true that the essence of music transcends language. Listening to the songs from the above single next to a few randomly selected yé-yé tracks for example, underscores stark differences in intent, design, and execution.
While some might question this admittedly casual comparison between Selda and French pop, my doing so was inspired in large part by her employment of a single moniker, an action generally associated in the West with the pop sphere and with divas in particular (though there’s also Odetta to complicate matters.) But the contrast brought tangible enlightenment; while certainly folk in direction, Selda’s initial work was also informed with a streak of modernity (it’s here that the comparison to Baez feels most apropos.)
She started performing in a family-owned nightclub while studying physics during the day at Ankara University, though her early spate of 45s was so wildly popular, reportedly selling millions, that choosing music as a profession was basically inevitable. In 1972 she represented Turkey in the international Golden Orpheus song contest, and in 1976 her first LP revealed an artist who had moved far beyond an exclusively folk-based realm.
Up to this point, Selda probably remains her most noted release in the West, largely due to its reissue around eight years back on Finders Keepers, an artist-run label with a significant hipness factor. And I really dig that one, but after spending substantial time with Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi I rate it as the stronger of the two.
Even though Selda carries the highpoints between the two records, deep inspection of the second album finds it unwinding more smoothly than the first, which is interesting since the follow-up’s stylistic diversity isn’t that appreciably lesser. While Selda is probably the place for Anatolian Rock buffs to begin (though at this late date I can’t imagine many in that camp having not already heard it), Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi offers rewards far less tethered to the confines of genre adaptation, and therefore it’s more consistently rewarding.
The opening title track finds her returning to the stripped-down mode of those early singles, again just voice and guitar, with a tense atmosphere rising from the initial plucked lines of the concise tune. And as Selda’s vocals emerge they’re accompanied by studio echo that enhances her emphatic (though always well-controlled) delivery.
But the warmly electrified and rhythmically loping psychedelia of “Utan, Utan” plainly shows that the LP wasn’t intended as any sort of conscious throwback to her career roots. This album and Selda were released in the same year, with some of the tracks here apparently even deriving from the same sessions that produced the first disc. And that’s easy to believe; “Utan, Utan” falls so seamlessly in line with Selda’s objectives that it ended up as a bonus track on the CD version of the Finders Keepers reissue.
As did the well-crafted psych-pop of “Karaoğlan,” and while the aforementioned Exoticism that hovers around Anatolian Rock can be a tad problematic, it’s also intriguing to hear a foreign culture absorb US/UK pop/rock influences and produce distinct variations on those ideas, and furthermore at a point when the locales of the root impulse had long abandoned them.
This is to say that nobody in the USA or Britain was crafting songs like “Karaoğlan” in 1976. But even better is how the torchy-folk vibes of the spacious and highly confident “Acıyı Bal Eyledik” are dissimilar from Western models. And then “Askerin Türküsü” arrives, a cut so thick with baroque-pop ambiance that it’s basically impossible to hear it and not imagine hanging out in some dank but stately castle.
To my ears the however, the exquisite blend of plucking, strumming, fluting (good fluting at that) and remarkably intense (but steady) emotionalism that is “Maden Dağı (Deloy, Deloy)” is probably the LP’s finest moment. From there the baroque undertakes a substantial rebound with “Maden İşçileri,” though overall the song is far more contemporary in comportment.
As it progresses there are even twists remindful of yé-yé’s more ambitious productions. And this contrasts well with the folk-pop of “Gardaşım Hasso,” a tune made sturdy through deft full-band interaction (the bass and drums are assertive but never too busy) and diversified via the appearance of a left-field, non-tacky synthesizer.
“Bundan Sonra” reestablishes the psych air that landed it on that Peace, Love & Poetry comp, and like much of the Turkish rock that comprises Selda’s contemporaries (in addition to Erkin Koray, there’re worthwhile bands like Ersen and her collaborators Moğollar to consider), the results are more mild than wild. It’s a nice trip, but I find the deceptively basic but ultimately very resonant folk strains of “Gözden, Gezden, Arpacıktan” more to my liking, though in terms of her Western fan base I seem to be in the minority.
Likewise, over time I’ve become less smitten with more pop-inflected tracks like “Eco’ya Dönder Beni,” though I shouldn’t give the false impression that the discrete qualities of these numbers aren’t quite easily soaked up. And as said, Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi flows very well, with “Eco’ya Dönder Beni” transitioning without a hiccup into the terrific combo of distorted saz and vocals that is closer “Zamanı Geldi.”
Along with Vurulduk Ey Halkim Unutma Bizi, Pharaway Sounds is also reissuing the second of her two self-titled records, this one from 1979, the disc many designate as the fourth in her long-playing chronology. I haven’t heard that one (or for that matter any of her post-coup work), but I’m certainly interested.
Based on the collective achievement of her early singles and first two LPs, Selda Bağcan is an artist deserving of far more than just cult status outside her homeland. Whether one begins with the still in-print Selda or instead chooses to jump into the fray through this freshly available pressing of her second slab, those with an appetite for culturally diverse musical treats should be well-pleased.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
