Rewind- Canakkale

While staying with the Egesels in Canakkale, I was extremely well taken care of. Their company and the food served was excellent. And after learning that the purpose of my trip was musical, they showed me everything they could about Turkish music.
This started with watching the excellent traditional music programs on the different channels of Turkish national TV. There were at least 3 channels dedicated to documentary type musical shows each night.
The next day, Cem took me to the university where he is a professor of agriculture, specializing in genetics. Not only was it interesting to talk with him, but he introduced me to multiple people there tied to the music department. Every one of them went out of their way to give me names of musicians, or help me find them and their performances on youtube (which wasn't blocked on the university server). One gentleman, who was a violinist and collector of traditional instruments, was currently learning how to play the classical kemence. He called his teacher and asked her if we could meet up later that night. She said yes, and we agreed to meet that night at 9 at her husband's shop.
Undoubtedly, this was one of the musical highlights of my trip. I feel very lucky to have had the chance to meet and listen to Filiz Bodur play the classical kemence. I posted one video of her on a previous post, but here are a couple more:

Filiz Bodur- Kemencevi from Jason Williams on Vimeo.

Filiz- Tango from Jason Williams on Vimeo.

The other people in these videos are Basak Egesel and their child Dogu, and the nice guy who introduced me to Filiz. I'm sorry, but I forgot his name.

The morning that I left Canakkale, Basak wanted us to stop by her work. She worked at the directorate of agriculture for Canakkale county. It was very interesting to talk to her about the similarities and differences of agriculture processes to ours at home- including the budding organic movement in Turkey that was being spearheaded on two islands off the coast near Canakkale. Her idea was to have me play some music from the states for the people she worked with. As it was pretty early in the morning, I wasn't enthusiastic about this surprise concert at first. But seeing as I was treated to such hospitality, and fortunate enough to see such good music while I was there, I swallowed my reservations. And it turned out to be a great experience. I played some folk and bluegrass music, a couple originals of mine, and two Turkish songs- all I knew then. Her fellow workers seemed to like it, and it created a connection that language couldn't. We said goodbye with smiles and warm feelings shared. And like that, Cem, Basak and Dogu saw me off on a bus towards Pergamon and Izmir.