chris n lau viajando!

This is the sound of the çeng.  It’s a Turkish harp. Lau and I went to a free concert (one of the many hundreds of events which were part of Istanbul’s “European Culture Capital 2010”) celebrating a 400 year anniversary of Ali Ufki, a curious Polish fellow who was the first to make western style notation of Turkish music. The guy has a crazy story—kidnapped by Crimean Tatars, followed by mastering 16 languages. Check him out. The concert utilized some instruments familiar (oud, saz, keman, darbuka, etc), but some new ones, like this çeng, along with a pan flute type instrument whose name escapes me. I’ll be posting more full songs from this concert in coming weeks.