Kara Güneş - great street music from Istanbul, Turkey

One of my favorite musical experiences in Turkey were the times I watched Kara Güneş play on the Istikal Cad (a block or two from our apartment in Istanbul). I bought a great CD of music from them (it home-made, burned), with 13 tunes. You can hear four or five of their songs on their myspace site.



They play on the street a lot, as well as other venues, and are very good, and pretty young. I don't know a lot about them, other than they attract large crowds on Istikal (a very musical neighborhood) and most of what is written about them is in Turkish. They play native instruments and drums, but listening to their music, they I hear hints of musics from the west like rock and blues and folk/country accents of string band music. At times, their music reminds me of the jazz band Oregon, when they were really soaring...

Among the little I've been able to discover about them is that the late Kemal Kan, a Turkish director and writer, directed a movie of the same title once. I don't even know the titles of their songs, since the CD I bought from them didn't have functioning ID3 tags...so they're song 1, song 2, etc.
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