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There were lots of per­for­mances by Başar Diki­ci on YouTube, but I couldn’t find any bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion about him, oth­er than that he was born in Adana. He looks fair­ly young. Dikici’s instru­ment is the Ney, a very sim­ple end-blown flute that has been in con­tin­u­ous use for four or five thou­sand years. A skilled play­er can cov­er three octaves with it. Sim­i­lar instru­ments abound through­out Asia, but the Ney is par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Turk­ish clas­si­cal music. But it’s at home in the many vari­eties of Turk­ish pop music, as well.

This album, whose title trans­lates as “bridge”, cov­ers both, with very nice sup­port­ing bass gui­tar by Nurhat Sens­es­li. Dikici’s own com­po­si­tions struck me as more inter­est­ing than the cov­ers of stan­dard tunes. “Gecenin Sesi (Night and the City)” gave me the most pleasure. 

Turkey has a very com­plex musi­cal scene, with every­thing from death met­al to Sufi con­tem­pla­tive hymns prof­it­ing from cur­rents mov­ing east­ward and west­ward. Turk­ish immi­grants have made it famil­iar to most Euro­peans, but North Amer­i­cans have not been much exposed to it. The apt­ly titled Köprü would give a nice taste of this cos­mopoli­tan music to a curi­ous Cana­di­an or American.