Photo: Mehmet Kandemir
With:
(click to the biography)
John Snauwaert: sax, compositions, arrangements
Hendrik Braeckman: guitar, compositions, arrangements
François Taillefer: percussion
Melike Tarhan: lead vocal, compositions
(Melike is a Belgium-based band)
MELIKE, Inn of Love, Homerecords (Belgium)
Inn Of Love arose from the meeting of Melike Tarhan and jazz saxophonist John Snauwaert, who has himself experimented with Turkish music in the past. On Inn Of Love Melike brings her own lyrics, but she also interprets some poems of Turkish poets like Yunus Emre, Eşrefoğlu Abdullah Rûmî or Kenan Rifaî and the track list also includes some Turkish traditionals. The arrangements by Snauwaert, Hendrik Braeckman (guitar) and Françios Taillefer (percussion) give the entire album a jazzy undertone.
Turkish music, refreshed by a breeze of improvised jazz or even free-jazz. The quartet Melike modernizes traditional Turkish melodies and rhythms, like oriental designers use old techniques such as marquetry of wood or hammered copper to create design objects with a temporary touch.
We were quite fascinated by that challenge, in which the singing and the voice of Melike Tarhan – Belgian singer with Turkish roots – play the central role and the instruments are a musical foundation from which the voice can bloom because the lyrics are important in oriental songs.
The first track sets the tone of the album: the free flight of a sax and a percussion rhythm that could accompany belly dancers during their act! Next to traditional tunes that are revised and rearranged, half of the tracks on the record are original songs composed by saxophone player John Snauwaert and guitarist Hendrik Braeckman and driven by the finesse and lightness of percussionist François Taillefer.
Altogether a very successful album of which the lyrics, whether traditional or written by Melike, tell us stories about lovers chatting underneath an apricot and beautiful women with a milky complexion. They go perfectly with the free-jazz melodies of the sax and the guitar. The album has already got the attention of the Belgian critics and hopefully its echoes will reach Istanbul!
Muzzika – by Nadia Khouri-Dagher