Project Name
Bard Beyond Tradition: Ozan Aksoy Explores the Universal Resonances of Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian Music via the American Experience on OZAN
Bard Beyond Tradition: Ozan Aksoy Explores the Universal Resonances of Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian Music via the American Experience on OZAN
The saz was Ozan Aksoy’s first instrument. He learned to play from his father, slowly mastering both the technique and its deep spiritual role in Alevi Kurdish life. The lute’s seven strings resonate with his musical heritage in OZAN (release: November 2, 2018; release celebration: November 4, 2018 at Drom NYC).
Drawing on the songs and musical sensibilities of Kurdish, Armenian, and other minorities that have long enriched Turkey’s culture, the multi-instrumentalist, moving singer, and composer offers works steeped in yearning, profound loss, and passionate devotion. Lullabies and love lyrics, wretched laments and celebratory songs interweave to give a snapshot of Aksoy’s artistic world, one that echoes universal notes and goes beyond the confines of tradition.
“As an Alevi Kurdish musician playing the saz, and as an immigrant musician in the US, I was surrounded by many constraints including my cultural baggage. That burden is why I couldn’t make a solo album until now,” Aksoy says. “But the time came. I wanted to share what I’ve been doing the past few years with the public. But I didn’t want to limit the sound of the album to a traditional box,” he reflects. “I wanted to have collaborations with musicians from different parts of the world, who play jazz or other styles. It’s my way of being a Kurdish musician in New York.”
It was meant to be, perhaps: Ozan translates loosely as “bard,” and that was the path that called Aksoy from a young age.
Aksoy’s boyhood love for the saz blossomed into a full-blown musical career, as he mastered strings, woodwinds, and percussion instruments and joined a groundbreaking group, Kardeş Türküler (“Ballads of Solidarity”), that highlighted the often overlooked music of some of Turkey’s culturally rich minorities. “We focused on the songs of these unrecognized and suppressed peoples, pushing the boundaries of inclusion in Turkey,” Aksoy explains. “We wanted to present the ideas of diversity and acceptance in an artistic way.” The ensemble recorded several albums and toured Europe.
After his experience with Kardeş Türküler, Aksoy decided to pursue a graduate degree in ethnomusicology. He landed in New York, amid a whole other world of sound, a whole new set of potential collaborators. It changed the way he interpreted important performers like Aram Tigran, the Armenian singer-songwriter who often sang in Kurdish. (His classic “Leyla” appears on OZAN.) Or the experimental psychedelic band Mogollar. (“Düm-Tek”)
For his piece “Hope,” for example, Aksoy turned to his friend Shyam Nepali and his sarangi, which had just the right emotional timbre for the track. “I wanted to have him in my soundscape, and I thought that melody would sound great on sarangi. Kemenche would be too sad, and sarangi, of all instruments, sounded the best. I love the sound and wanted to put it on the album as much as I could.”
Even on pieces closely linked to Kurdish tradition like “Rinde,” Aksoy felt inspired to expand the sonic palette, incorporating a flamenco-inflected bridge and suggesting a broader pan-Mediterranean sensibility. The experimentation comes naturally to a musician who has long heard connections where others heard differences.
Yet there is something about making a life far from one’s native land that lends itself to introspection. Aksoy takes an unusual rhythmic pattern as a jumping-off point for “Rhythm of Loneliness,” a pattern called “curcuna,” or pandemonium. It conveys the feeling of being alone in a great crowd, the solitude that strikes in the middle of the big city.
A new group he co-founded in New York introduced Aksoy to songs like the heartwrenching “Derzor Çölleri,” an Armenian lament from the early 20th-century genocide, recorded in California as part of the WPA. “I got to learn about this with a group called Nour. I knew that there were songs about survival, but I didn’t know this specific one,” recounts Aksoy. “It is a very specific song, about a parent who is in exile in Syria and has to sell his child into bondage for them to survive. I wanted to have a record of this one, with my voice and instruments. I play everything. This one is just me, from top to bottom. I wanted to have this long, lonely echoing ending.”
“This is a snapshot of where I am as an artist. I’m putting all these traditions together in an era of hatred and separation. I didn’t want to shy away from that. Ultimately, these songs speak to our political climate, in the U.S. and in Turkey. They are about immigration, human experience, universal sensations,” Aksoy notes. “This is my current mood. As I grow older, I want to turn attention to those essential emotions that are overlooked in modern life, the nostalgia, pain, suffering. And the hope; there is hope in there, too.”