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Aegean blues

The blues of the Aegean or the blues of the Mediterranean - that's what music critics call an album that found us in Ayvalik. Çiğdem Aslan's "Mortissa" (2013 Asphalt Tango Records).
Today we go back years to a pontoon in the sea, where we eat stuffed zucchini flowers, bastirma burek and red mullets, boats pass in the strait between Ayvalik and Lesbos, and we are back to the past.

We listen to and talk about Çiğdem Aslan's album "Mortissa" - an album we encountered on the way to the South Seas and which we searched to buy for at least a year.
The story can be divided into two - the album itself and our meeting with this music.

Kurdish singer Çiğdem Aslan lives with her family in Istanbul and studies English literature before moving to London to study music. She is strongly influenced by the creativity of minorities. She recorded with Balkan and Kurdish musicians before the idea for an album in the so-called "Cafe Aman" style was born. Rebetiko - or the blues of the unjust poor in the early 20th century in the main Greek and Turkish ports such as Athens, Izmir, Thessaloniki and Istanbul.

Thus, in 2013, the album "Mortissa" was released, which changed everything. The experience that Aslan has gained to this point makes things even deeper and more complete.

The accent is rebetiko, so here briefly about this genre - this is the music of outsiders during the years of the Greco-Turkish war. The songs of rejected and desperate people. Hashish is smoked in pubs and prostitution flourishes. All emotions have reached their limit. At this point, the so-called Mortissas appear - women who have crossed the line, for whom courage is self-sacrifice and taking part of the fight. With music. This is how we would translate the title of the album - a strong, independent woman, ready to sacrifice herself. And those who have watched the wonderful movie "Rebetiko" know the tragic fate of these women…

The pain of what happened on both sides is still there today, and no matter how hard they try to overcome it, it stays.
Thus, with the pain and sadness of our host in Ayvalik, our meeting with Çiğdem Aslan and the album "Mortissa" happened. We will still remember him - a man looking at Lesbos, sitting alone at his table, singing in Greek, and his soul is full of sadness…
The customers in his inn enjoyed the delicious food and the south, and he looked at the "Island" - as Lesbos is called there - and listened.

At that moment, we heard the voice of Çiğdem Aslan for the first time and everything changed. A photo of the album took us on an adventure because it turned out to be sold out and we had to look for it specifically. Good friends helped us get the CD, and a year later we listened to the magic that is carried in the voice of Çiğdem Aslan.
Today, we are happy to share it in support of the thesis that this is the Aegean, even, according to some critics, Mediterranean blues. The voice of the unjust. The voice of truth.
Years and years later, we continued to walk through those lands, and the sincerity and purity of the people still amazes us. There is nothing accidental. The blues was really born in a clean environment.

Today we listen to Çiğdem Aslan and "Mortissa" with the song “To Dervisaki” - "The Little Dervish".
A singer about whom the press says: "She hides both a lioness and a nightingale." A rare pearl in our collection.
And you can listen to the whole album and buy it off digital platforms.

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