Erkin Koray – Meçhul: Singles & Rarities (Sublime Frequencies Records)
In the history of rock and roll, there are some milestones that are referenced often enough that they become cliché: one could call to mind Elvis on Ed Sullivan's show, Woodstock, Altamont, the last Sex Pistols performance, or any number of other moments. Their tendrils of significance unfurl into each successive generation, slithering around the collective memory and gaining strength the further they emanate from their source, until once again the winds of change begin to blow and we bear witness to a whole new set of signifiers as the predecessors are relegated to the purgatory of nostalgia and myth. Other cultures, however, have taken more tenuous steps to achieve what the West has. Turkey is an excellent example. While the initial stirrings of rock music could be heard there as early as the 1950s, few watershed moments have approached the continued relevance of the first Golden Microphone song contest in 1965, a decisive moment in which the country's take on rock and roll was first clearly articulated. The contest, based on encouraging young musicians to incorporate their country's traditional styles into the music that was steadily being churned out of the United States and England, helped to construct an aesthetic that defined the country's popular culture for decades to come, an approach that was no less compelling for its syncretic origins.
This was a time in which many Western artists looked East for inspiration in the burgeoning psychedelic movement. Most came across dilettantish, utilizing only superficial characteristics of non-Western music to afford their work an exotic sheen that did little to capture the vivaciousness and subtlety of the styles they so desperately wished to emulate. On the other hand, Turkish artists like Edip Akbayram, Selda Bağcan, and Mustafa Ozkent (to name but a small number) achieved what few of their American and European counterparts could. Beginning with a solid understanding of the sort of non-Western music that typically seemed shallow in less familiar hands, they built a version of rock and roll not based on emulation but a reconstruction unique to their circumstances, where ideas were drawn from both within and without. It's an approach that seems well suited to Turkey, a country that has acted for millenia as a gateway between East and West, and possesses a culture apt to draw from both but to be wholly a part of neither.
Despite the contrast, any sort of literal cultural analogy that could be applied to this music predicates itself on flawed assumptions and gross oversimplifications. So the abundance of references to Turkish guitarist Erkin Koray as the Jimi Hendrix of Turkey, while perhaps indicative of a certain degree of influence and ability, should be viewed in the light of the description's inadequacy. Koray's achievements are far more notable on their own. He was among the first musicians in his country to embrace the electric guitar, and founded the earliest Turkish rock and roll band in 1957. Despite his success, he received little support from record companies until the Golden Microphone contests nearly a decade later. In his music of this period, one can hear echoes of the counter-cultural currents reaching their apex elsewhere in the world, but little of it is reflected so directly in Koray's music that it could be written off as an imitation. It was an embodiment of an attitude that was revolutionary and dangerous for its time – it's worth noting that Koray once took a knife to the gut for the crime of having long hair – and, unlike a substantial amount of music that defied the mores of a particular place or time, it holds up extremely well.
Meçhul: Singles & Rarities compiles a variety of EP releases culled from Koray's personal record collection, all dating from 1970 to 1976, arguably his most productive period. The songs are not quite as experimental as his full-lengths, possibly as the result of the abbreviated amount of time available on an EP, and possibly as the result of record companies seeking material that might be more widely accessible. A linear evolutionary arc to this material is harder to determine than with his more extended work, with songs generally utilizing similar melodic and structural ideas. While there are outliers, such as the driving hard psychedelia of “Krallar” or the orchestra present on “Sevdigim,” the songs largely fall into vigorous, mid-tempo rhythmic workouts with all the defining characteristics of Koray's work in place but none front and center. The songs focus more on the musicians' interplay than on any blatant displays of Koray's prodigious talents as a guitarist. This isn't to say that the songs lack his inspired musicianship or deft interweaving of seemingly disparate stylistic elements. On the contrary, it may even provide unfamiliar listeners a more accessible jumping-off point into both his back catalog and the larger canon of Anatolian psychedelia, of which there is a substantial amount, largely possessing a high degree of quality and consistency.
This degree of substance attests to the tenacity and creativity of the musicians involved with the earliest days of Turkish rock music. Theirs was a sound born from a tsunami of effort rather than smaller eddies of discontent, a style that remained unsettling to their culture's mainstream despite the musicians' embrace of traditional aesthetics, and a unique approach that has resonated through subsequent generations. There were many with some involvement in this process, but Erkin Koray's predates that of almost every other artist. While Meçhul: Singles & Rarities shows an artist at the peak of his ability, he has time and again shown a willingness to redefine both his own work and his country's at large.