2018-12-07 21:22:41
Carlo Domeniconi - Variations on an Anatolian folk songThis work is a charming and melodic work based on a folk song from Anatolia, the large peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean that constitutes the Asian part of Turkey. He learned it from Asik Veysel, a popular blind Turkish folk singer. Domeniconi considers the song a fine representative of a strain in contemporary Turkish folk music analogous to the blues. The name of the song is "Uzun ince bir yoldayim" (I am traveling down a long narrow path).
The work is in the established form of Western variation music, with the theme stated and then given various treatments by the guitar. Intriguingly, the theme itself is not particularly exotic. It has a few scale inflections that the average Western listener would associate with "Eastern" music. But part of this impression is due to the fact that Domeniconi presents the tune in a form we might call "as written," that is, without ornamentations and inflections that would probably be added in a singer's interpretation.
Then Domeniconi goes on to introduce such ornamentations, meanwhile also adding, in some variations, dance rhythms. In the end it is a work that charms the audience while demonstrating aspects of similarity and dissimilarity between the Western and Turkish musical cultures.
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