Others represent Western Classical, Jazz or Rock musicians. There's even a frog band:
At the entrance to Karaalioglu Park, Frog statues play under ads for Antalya's Piano Festival
I heard six different types of music within the past week. Here's a summary:
Monday I met friends for dinner at the Italian restaurant called "My House". The group included two German women and their Turkish boyfriends. There was a large family gathering at the next table, and they'd brought musicians playing violin, oud ( a Turkish guitar), clarinet and bongo drums. The repertoire consisted of traditional tunes (all the Turks in the room knew the words) and Arabesque instrumentals.
The patriarch of the big group saw us enjoying the music and invited us to dance. Gabi and I did some wiggling while the men did some stomping, and then I joined the group doing the pinky-holding cirle dance (not its real name). I don't know what the dance is called, but I did it at Nazli's sister's wedding, so it's probably Kurdish rather than Turkish in origin.
Pat got frustrated with salsa steps and started a conga line.
Tuesday is Salsa night, so it was another dance workout, this time with recorded music. One of the guys I was dancing with turned out to be a musician who teaches guitar at the University and plays in hotels and clubs around town. We decided to get together to read through some songs, so the next day (Wednesday) we worked through various standards as well as some rock tunes. The rock stuff doesn't really work in my voice, but an evening of acoustic guitar and standards is a possibility.
Wednesday night is Ayyas night, where the band plays Turkish pop, folk and sometimes American rock classics. From Ayyas we went to Ruud Bar in Konyaalti for the jam session of bluesy rock. I was out dancing for the third time in a week. That has never happened to me in New York. I've seen three operas in one week, but that's rarely as much fun.
Ayyas Meyhane, Kaleici
Which is not to say I've completely abandoned classical music: Friday night I went to the Antalya Symphony concert and heard Spohr's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra as well as a fine performance of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.
Saturday night it was back to the Italian restaurant , where a mezzo-soprano pop singer and a guitarist serenaded us with everything from Turkish pop to Sting, Sade and Lady Gaga in occasionally comprehensible English. But you haven't lived until you've heard an acoustic version of "I will survive" sung in Turkish.
And with that, my week in Music came to a close.
