Birol Topaloğlu
Birol Topaloğlu (* 1965 in Apso, Pazar District , Turkey ) is a Turkish musician who performs folk music from his Lasi homeland on the eastern Black Sea coast on a range of traditional instruments. These include the box neck lute kemençe and the bagpipe tulum . The folk songs performed in Turkish and Lasisch are also a central component of his modern ethno-jazz compositions.
Topaloğlu grew up in a Lasi-speaking family with a musical background in the village of Apso on the Black Sea near the Georgian border. He completed an electrical engineering degree in Gaziantep , after which he worked as an electrical engineer in various locations for a few years. During these years he played the long-necked lute saz as an amateur and sang turkish pop music. His brother Şenol Topaloğlu is a recognized kemençe player and ballad singer in Pazar, but has not yet published any music under his own name.
In the mid-1990s, Birol Topaloğlu met the guitarist and kopuz player Erkan Oğur (* 1954), an influential composer who combines Turkish classical music with elements of folk music. He encouraged him to collect lullabies (ninni) and ballads ( destan turkuleri , old narrative tradition performed by an aşık ) from the Lasen in his home region. Topaloğlu later studied the folk music tradition of the local Lasen and Mingrelians in Georgia and learned several instruments by himself. His music, which has been arranged and composed since then, is essentially based on the collected Eastern Turkish and Georgian traditional dance music and singing styles.
Topaloğlu mainly plays the fiddle kemençe, the most popular dance musical instrument on the Black Sea coast; the bagpipe tulum, with which Lasen especially accompany their dances ; also pilili , a rare end-blown single-reed instrument with five to seven finger holes from the Georgian Republic of Adjara, and the plucked long-necked lute chonguri with four strings from Georgia. His modern arrangements also include instruments from western cultures such as electric bass , guitar , accordion , violin (Turkish keman ) and percussion (often sparingly with zil ). Other regional accompanying instruments are the Turkish saz , the three-stringed Georgian string lute chuniri ( çuniri ) with a circular body, the wooden flute salamuri from eastern Georgia, the three-stringed plucked lute Panduri from Georgia, the shepherd's flute kaval and the Armenian short oboe duduk or the related Turkish mey .
As a traditional musician, Topaloğlu performs with tulum or kemençe to accompany horon dances at family celebrations or at Alevi cultural events. He also played in the folk music group Kardeş Türküler founded in 1993 . His music is always described as "authentic", he distances himself from today's pop music.
Topaloğlu publishes his recordings on the Kalan Müzik label . Outside of Turkey, he has performed regularly in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States since 1999.
Discography
- Heyamo. Kalan Müzik, 1997
- Aravani. Kalan Müzik, 2000
- The Best of Heyamo and Aravani. 7/8 Music Productions, 2002
- Lazeburi. Kalan Müzik, 2003
- Ezmoce. Kalan Müzik, 2007
literature
- Eliot Bates: Social Interactions, Musical Arrangement, and the Production of Digital Audio in Istanbul Recording Studios. Dissertation. University of California at Berkeley 2008, p. 78f ( at google books )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mülheimer Theater an der Ruhr ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (accessed November 16, 2011)
- ↑ Birol Topaloğlu. seveneighths.com
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Topaloğlu, Birol |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Turkish musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1965 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Apso |