The Off-Colored Officer - Arif Sağ



As promised earlier, continuing with our current interest in folk music from far-out corners of the Earth, today we feature another big name from Turkey: Arif Sağ. While our first feature, Erkin Koray, headlined the rock & roll movement in Turkey, our bağlama virtuoso here is more of a folk music hero. Again, as it probably is the norm with musicians from country where English is not the national spoken language, our research on Mr. Arif returned lots of websites in Turkish. But well, you know, sometimes persistence does pay...

Arif Sağ (born 1945 in Aşkale, Erzurum, Turkey) is a singer, bağlama virtuoso and leading figure in modern Turkish folk music, as well as a former MP in the Turkish parliament, and an academic. He taught more than 40.000 students in his music school ASM (Arif Sağ Music). He is a big influence in Turkish Folk Music... (Source)

Yeah, that is pretty much it that we could gather about him. I mean, you could give his official website (Resmi Web Sitesi) a shot, and with the help of Google Translate, we could be going somewhere further, but then that would have probably defeated the real intent and purpose of this post - sharing great music with the rest of the world. I'm not sure about other people but I prefer my foreign language songs to remain alien, so that the exotic remains as exotic as when it was first discovered.

Embedded at the end of this post are two of my favorite songs from Arif Sağ, entitled "Su Samsunun Evleri" (Yeah, very funny Google Translate) and "Osman Pehlivan". Plus, if you really have to find detailed information about the man, this here is it.

The Off-Colored Officer - Erkin Koray



Yes, the Off-Colored Officer has come back again after quite a long absence, making way for the 30 best albums list. And by the look of things, this should also spell for the return of One Day Holiday and Very Grammatic features as well. To avoid confusion over things, here's an itinerary of how these features will be featured in this blog:
1) One Day Holiday - This is the original feature in this blog where new albums are reviewed. But please do not confuse this feature with REVIEWED. Check number 4 (Hint: Some random thoughts are included)
2) Very Grammatic - When there is absolutely nothing (musically) to talk about, here's where random musings go
3) The Off-Colored Officer - If there is any interesting piece of music from the realms of psych rock, cosmic rock, or anything that is 'weird' that is worth raving about, this is the place to do so
4) REVIEWED - Here is where an album is reviewed, and nothing else. No bulshits, only cold hard facts baby
5) LISTED - When we've ran out of things to BS about, we'll come up with a list. Of things

To kick off 2011 in style, here I re-post again (if not in this blog then it must've been at my previous no-longer-existed blog) a video from Turkey's prominent figure in their rock music history, Erkin 'Baba' Koray. It was largely thanks to this website (quite an unlikely place) who introduced me to this Turkish rock music legend. There will be another Turkish musical legend making an appearance soon, so watch this space out. I don't know why but there is something quite hypnotic about Turkish rock music. Maybe that's why they call it psych rock?

I have absolutely no idea what this song is about but I know that it's one of my all-time favorite off-kilter song.