(Foto above: Father and son, Mesut and Ihsan Ozgen in the studio) There was a time when returning from trips to distant and close-by places I would bring home some music. First it was vinyl, then cassettes now CD and DVDs but it simmers down to listening to and discovering parts of different cultures. This time in Istanbul was a little bit different. First of all, there is a slight difference between, generally speaking, Oriental and Western music. We easily distinguish between a French "chansone" and an Irish "jig", between a Greek "bouzouki" and Portuguese "fado", not to speak about the American "blues", "rock", "spiritual", "country" and so forth. But I doubt that an untrained Western ear will recognize the subtle varieties of Oriental music. Though a Turkish and an Arab tune may be light-years apart, for an "echte Nederlander" they would blur into "Oriental". The Oriental music is different because it is created with the use of different rhythms, keys and instruments. Different tonality thus. (This is because of the so called "quarter-tone" structure of the Turkish music as opposed to the mixture of "full" and "half-tone" structure of the Western music. The Oriental may sound monotonous and not very much for a Western ear). Two or three nights before my return to Amstelveen my son took me out for a drink and we had a long stroll along Istiklal avenue deciding which of the establishments appeared most attractive. There are, of course, other, incomparably better joints around istanbul than those few along the shopping street, but we were not actually in a mood for a real night out. Actually we were on the brink of returning home without a drink when first a late-night audio-video store appeared and next to it something which could pass as an Irish pub. In an instant I wanted to first buy a CD or two but then felt that it would be daft getting in the pub with a plastic beg. That is how I missed the chance to install Mesut Ozgen on my iPod. (Mesut Ozgen, portrait by Paul Schraub) In case you are not familiar with the name, Dr Mesut Ozgen is an MD. He graduated Medicine from the University of Hacettepe and was one of those very capable, jovial people who, while running his medical practice as a respected doctor for full seven years, enjoyed playing guitar for himself and his friends. This strike with Ozgen reminds me of d-r prof Metodi Chepreganov, now retired, who was a dean of the medical college of Kiril and Metodij University, chief of the Clinic of Psychiatry and internationally respected expert in applied and theoretical psychiatry. When he would go to birthday parties, wedding receptions or excursions his guitar would be in the trunk of the car so that his friend or relatives would not need to make him use somebody else's instrument or pay taxi service to fetch one. But there the similarity ends: Mesut Ozgen is in a completely different rank and category of that guitar ball-game. (The Prince of Wales chatting with Vlatko Stefanovski, in Skopje) On the other hand, his decision to try his best and go furtherest to the West, to USA first and then right on the shore of the Pacific, kind of brings in the profile of Vlatko Stefanovski another absolutely exclusive guitarist, who did perform in America but also ventured East and composed music for a Turkish film, I think, and eventually ended up with his CD title published by one of the biggest Turkish music houses. If you are patient for his site to open you will enjoy the best music that there is from Macedonia and, well, much wider (!). Once you like that, another piece may be found here as a music illustration about the resources of Turkey. Vlatko is great. This kind of "train of thoughts" when something or somebody so vary far away from one's home reminds me of home follows me lately everywhere I go. It does not take much, a whiff of smell, a slanted smile, glitter in somebody's eye in Lima or Canberra takes me to images long forgotten or totally out of "active" memory and without any logic I am taken to events and people perceived as part of what was once and through this phenomenon still is my real home. The previous signs of the boundaries of what I still accept as home kind of fade and sort of expand at the same time and I feel that West Hollywood integrates with Karpos IV-The Paradise City and is almost as much "home" as Paleo Psihico or now the Watercirkel. All these move like this layer of magma deep under our feet and are often flowing through each other without mixing but still forming a layer which I can bundle up and call home. Only two places, the first of my early childhood and the second prior to adolescence, stubbornly remain the one an only image of "real home". The solid, hottest, hard core of everything that has ever mattered. Phew. Skip this and better listen to some Vlatko or Ozgen guitar-work. Guitar buffs may be interested to know that Ozgen started playing the instrument at 21, quite an advanced age for a serious career. He must have been knd of an odd-man-out in the family because his mum Bilge Ozgen is a composer and his father Ihsan is a top-rated kemence player of Turkey. After he won the Paco Pena Guitar Festival in Cordoba he went to New Heaven where he got the master's degree from Yale topped with "Dean's Prize" accolade. Eventually his album Troubadour" got a lift-off with flattering reviews in the specialized magazines "Classical Guitar", "Guitar Review" and "Acoustic Guitar". He now teaches guitar at the University of California in santa Cruz while producing DVDs,attending various festivals, lecturing and preparing the new "big hit". If interested in Turkish music you probably have a wide selection of URL but I risk to propose you to see (useless if you do not understand Turkish) this one run by Sefik Kahramankaptan who often publishes very interesting columns in variety of Turkish newspapers and magazines. The guy is very resourceful, impressively well informed presenting his points and a mixture of news-cum-comment with informal ease.

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