christmas blues

mall safety in question. a three years old girl loses her balance, drops down four levels in a mall. she was "hanging out" with her family when she dropped through an opening near an escalator. media questions mall safety in full page editorials. nobody questioning good parenthood.


children playing on suburbian ghetto streets. got hit by cars speeding over 60 miles per hour on city streets. madia calling murder "accidents". drivers speeding over 60 miles per hour on city streets driving $100,000 SUV's getting away with murder.


children, beautiful with dark eyes. on slum street corners. searching for an open window through which the sun may shine one happy day. windows opening into humid lounges. where old scavengers search for their ridiculous destiny. a country where child pornography downloaded through the Internet ranks among the top five where Internet access per capita ranks among the lowest.


christmas blues. where illegal prostitution and $10,000 suits merge. where everyone has something to sell. where everyone craves for purchase. noone knows christmas. noone knows meanings. everything is about who, where, what.


christmas blues. long forgotten church ruins scattered along the city. where noone enters, prays or thinks about them. dwellers of long time now die in los angeles suburbs and return only for burial services. tens of people on the streets aimed for churces sunday mornings in a city of over fifteen million people. and everything that remains to be discussed or recognized is in the eyes of beholder. everything that remains is politics.

children. no schooling available. no family love available. only baren streets of slums to lighten the day. dirt toys, cement stones, iron sticks (reminders of abandoned development sites), and options to improve misery. christmas blues. all around me.

hall of famer ertegün dies

saturday night another turkish star of international fame passed away. Mr. Ahmet Ertegün (1923-2006) founder of atlantic records and maker of fame died in the united states where he lived since his graduation from university.
he and few friends founded atlantic records in 1947 to promote jazz and blues that he loved. it started as a hobby but soon became one of the giants of production business. he was also founder and ex-president of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

his death was due to a slip and hit of his head at a Rolling Stones gig in New York back in October. he never recovered. we wish his family and friends the best, may he rest in peace. he will be interred in istanbul today.

this unhappy event broght back memories. memories of new york in the 90's, where blue note and alike were filled with jazz enthusiast from every corner of the world. it was pre 9/11 and clinton era. I remember a particular night when an artist (his name escapes my memory) performed a set he called mozart blues, based on the andante movement of composer's piano concerto no:20. what a performance to remember. the music so unlike mozart (the movement itself is so unlike mozart), so dark, so full of the turns and turbulances wolfgang went through late 1780's, so sublime, so perfect. and the mozart blues payed due homage to this perfection. I later learned that the musician was produced by Mr. Ertegün, and later performed in Bodrum, Turkey, where also a very young Norah Jones (another find of Mr. Ertedgün) performed later on. At Bodrum he spent his summers. The little summer town near Aegean cost of Turkey is now reknown as a jazz spot because of his efforts.

little homage will be paid in his memory in this country. because he was very successful, because he promoted non mainstream art, because he was an outsider.but here at turkish diaries, he will be remembered as a great man of music.