Before going into any details,please spend your few minutes and listen the song below.
This song is a cover of Temple of the King (Rainbow) by famous Turkish singer Müslüm Gürses.This Youtube video also includes English subtitles.
If you listened,please let me know what do you think of this song. For me and i believe for many Turkish speaking people it is a very touching performance. Whenever i listen to this song my hand unsonsciously searches for a sigarette and lighter (although i don't smoke) .So it would be really interesting to hear opinions of non Turkish speaking people.
If you liked the song,you must be wondering who is Müslüm Gürses or in other words Müslüm Baba (the word "Baba" is used a signature of respect).
I am not going to write his biography here, this information is available in many resources. I just want to give information about his music and the variation he made.
Unfortunately and very sadly,Müslüm Baba died in 2013. He spent most of his music career with the kind of music called "arabesk" or "arabesque". As the word itself denotes, this kind of music is said to "remind the arabic music and generally express pessimist feelings". Personally i dont agree with the "arabic" part, as i dont see much relation between "arabesque" music and "arabic music ".To give example,the song below is from Müslüm Baba's "arabesque" years. You decide,if it is related with "arabic music" or not.
Arabesque music had its top years between 1960-1990. Mainly was consumed by people how had lower social status,like workers for example. The arabesque song above complains about difficulties in ife and says that "i am bored of the life i live". It was generally despised by people who had higher social status. I would say this genre of Turkish music has similarities with the music of black slaves who lived in US in 19th century (and later their music made roots of blues and jazz).
As blues music gave birth to differnet variations of rock music, arabesque music also started to have transitions with rock music after year 2000 ,the millenium. Different artists started to cover arabesque music in rock genre with guitars,drums and keyboards sometimes. And this was the time we discovered new skills of Müslüm Baba. He sang few rock songs with his special interpretion.
This is one those songs
But the most impressive Müslüm Baba performances i saw came with his "Aşk tesadüfleri sever" album. He made cover of few very well known international songs. One of them is the song you listened at the beginning of this post. Two other impressive ones were:
Aşk tesadüfleri sever (Cover of Bachelorette - Björk
Bir ömür yetmez ki (Cover of The world is not enough - Garbage)
Of course, credits must be given to Murathan Mungan who was the supervisor of this album and also poets who wrote lyrics for these songs. But at the end of the day, i search this song in youtube with the name of Müslüm Gürses...
Hope you liked this post,learned something new and liked Müslüm Baba performances.