#asllan

[indefinite-pitch]

Asllan - Birth (ABSIS Remix)

Buy & Support on Bandcamp: Asllan - Citizen Of The World

#premiere #407 #asllan #citizen of the world #absis #remix #oslated #osl024

[vizu-al]

Quilted Flowers: 1940s Albanian & Epirot Recordings from the Balkan Label LP Limited Edition

Ajdin Asllan was born in Leskovik near the present-day southern border of Albania on March 12, 1895. At the age of 30, on July 12, 1925, he married a girl named Emverije, who was one month shy of her 16th birthday, in her native town Korçë, about 80 miles north. He arrived in New York by himself less than a year later on September 20, 1926, and when he filed his Declaration of Intent to become an American citizen in 1928 as a resident of Detroit, he gave his occupation as "musician." Emverije joined him in New York City on July 27, 1931. Asllan appears to have made his first recordings in November 1931 as a clarinetist on four songs issued as 12” discs by Columbia sung in Albanian by K. Duro N. Gerati. In January 1932 he recorded again, this time singing and playing oud on three Columbia 12”s along with several Albanian singers and the violinist Nicola Doneff (born March 21, 1891 Dichin, Bulgaria; died July 19, 1961 New York). In 30s Asllan launched an independent label called Mi-Re (roughly “With New” in Albanian) Rekord primarily to release his own recordings, but it stalled out after about 6 releases. In October 1941 he accompanied a Greek singer and songwriter named G.K. Xenopoulos as an oudist along with the beloved Greek clarinetist Kostas Gadinis and accordionist John Gianaros for the Orthophonic subsidiary of Victor Records run by Tetos Demetriades. The trio of Gadinis, Asllan, and Gianaros cut another four sides for Orthophonic May 1, 1942. Shortly thereafter, Asllan relaunched his label as Me Re with the help of Doneff and then quickly renamed it, more generically, Balkan. Gianaros came in as a business partner, and Balkan released scores of records, some of them seemingly selling thousands of copies in the mid-40s, but Gianaros split angrily with Asllan after just a few years over money problems. By 1947, Doneff had trademarked the Kaliphon label, which drew from much of the same roster of New York musicians of the Greek- and Turkish-speaking performers as Balkan and apparently collaborated in distribution, marketing, and manufacturing into the 1950s, but some business distinction had been drawn. A third label, Metropolitan, was launched and became at catchall for further Greek, Turkish, Armenian, and Ladino material by New York players, but it's not clear who was in charge or how things were divided up. Maybe Metropolitan was started by Asllan as a separate business to dodge the taxman or old creditors? We don’t know. All three labels shared a standard black-on-red color scheme that, it would seem reasonable to guess, was based on the Albanian flag and Asslan’s original, core purpose as an artist and impresario. Adjin and Emverije lived during the 1930s into the 50s first at 143 Norfolk St. and then at 42 Rivington St. (where Asllan opened a record shop), in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where Eastern European Jewish immigrants surrounded the small Albanian community and Turkish-speaking Sephardic Jews, and abutting Little Italy and a strip of Greek coffee houses on Mulberry Street. He worked within a network of primarily Turkish- and Greek-speaking performers in New York and released recordings prolifically made both locally and overseas through the 40s and 50s. He corresponded with his brother Selim (who sings on track 1, side A, later worked on the radio in Tirana and co-founded the National Ensemble of Folk Songs and Dances) back home, who was able to secure masters of Albanian performers recorded in Istanbul and Athens along with performances by Turkish- and Greek-speaking stars including Rosa Eskenazi and Udi Hrant (both of whom subsequently made extended visits to the U.S.) Greeks and Armenians had, even at the low ebb of immigration during the 1940s-50s, substantial immigrant populations in New York and around the country - Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and many other cities. Those markets kept the Balkan label afloat for nearly 20 years. But Asllan also issued about 40 discs for the Albanian-language market ca. 1945-50 (at which point he retained a 500-series numbering scheme for them, picking up where he’d left off with his Me Ri label a decade earlier), including both folk music of southern Albania and choral music, much of the latter anti-Fascist Communist songs. In addition, three discs were issued as part of Balkan’s Greek series of uncredited musicians from Pogoni and Konitsa, towns about 30 miles south as the crow flies from where Asllan was born. The total Albanian-speaking population in the U.S. at the time was less than 10,000, and many couldn’t afford record players. But despite the small market for Albanian-language songs, he made sure to release discs for his countrymen. It was a time of immense political and social turbulence in both Albania and Greece, and the sense of duty to music is palpable in his work. Balkan’s business model was haphazard. Its numbering system, if one can call it that, indicates a tendency to start a series, then add to it - or not - sporadically, driven largely the question, “can we sell 500 of these? (And if so, can we sell 1000?)” The last Balkan 78s were issued around 1959; a few LP releases appeared around 1960, more than 20 years after Asllan released his first discs. We know he visited his native home and family in 1951, 25 years after having become American. He died in New York in October 1976. He had no children, save the records. ========= We have so far been able to trace a biographical narrative of only one of the other immigrant performer among those who play on this collection, Chaban Arif, who apparently sings on track 9. He was born May 22, 1899 in Berat, Albania, attended school through the second grade, and arrived alone at Ellis Island on November 2, 1920 at the age of 19 under the name Aril Shaban. His intention upon arrival was to meet up with a cousin, Mahomet Hajrules (who, in turn, had arrived only six months earlier under the name Mehemet Airula) in Southbridge, Massachusetts. However, there was a family of four from Shaban’s hometown on the same steamship who were headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (via a stop first at the south Philadelphia home of a relative), so Shaban wound up in Pittsburgh. He filed his first papers to become a U.S. citizen in Canton, Ohio in 1925, but he had returned to Albania in June of 1928, where he married an 18 year old woman named Nadire, and by 1931 had returned to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where he was working at the Duquesne, Pennsylvania Carnegie steel mill. (When his cousin Mehmet Hajrulla filed his Declaration of Intent to naturalize as a U.S. citizen in 1937, he was a widower living on Braddock Ave. in Pittsburgh and working as a painter.) The 1940 census found Shaban Arif relocated to 55 Clinton St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, about seven blocks from Adjin Asllan’s place on Rivington. Arif told the census enumerator that he worked 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year for $916 a year (about $17,000 a year in today’s money) at the counter of of a restaurant. The man he listed on his WWII draft registration card as his closest contact was named Kardi Braim, who gave his country of origin either as Albania and Macedonia on different documents, had himself worked for a brick manufacturer in Erie County, Pennsylvania in addition to a string of other laboring jobs and worked at the time at Stewart’s Restaurant. It would seem reasonable to guess that both Shaban Arif and Kardi Braim were in Adjin Asllan’s limited social circle of Albanians in the neighborhood in the early 1940s when he recorded on this song. The $1 that the disc cost could have represented three and a half hours of labor at the restaurant. We know nothing else of Shaban Arif’s life except that he died in New York City in September, 1971. (Kardi Braim died in 1978.)

#Ajdin leskoviku #albania #shqip #vinyl #music

[alexbkrieger13]

Asllani is actually not a clear first choice as captain before Magda… Magda has worn the armband many times before even when kosse was starting. Peter also always talks about that we don’t have a “vice captain”

idk I'm going off the fact at the euros once Seger was out had the armband so I think Asllan that sense she's just a little bit higher up than Magda

[xhemilbeharaj]

Aksidenti/ Punonjësit e kompanisë do kryenin furnizim me goma

Aksidenti/ Punonjësit e kompanisë do kryenin furnizim me goma

Një aksident me pasojë vdekjen ka ndodhur këtë pasdite në aksin rrugor Fier-Ballsh.  Mësohet se një automjet tip ‘Toyota’ nga dalë nga rruga dhe për pasojë ka humbur jetën drejtuesi 64-vjeçar, Qemal Kamberaj.  Aksidenti ka ndodhur në vendin e quajtur ‘Qafa e Lalarit’.  Nga ky aksident ka mbetur i plagosur edhe një person tjetër, Asllan Kajo, 59 vjeç, banues në Patos.  Makina ka qenë e…

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[lasclsave]

Action bronson tour los angeles

To date, Action Bronson has released five studio albums, and he has received two BET Awards nominations. He was recognized as one of the best up-and-coming rappers the same year by XXL Magazine. The following spring, adoring fans were treated by Bronson to an incredible live performance at the Coachella Music Festival. His talent and hard work did not go unnoticed, and Bronson signed a record deal with Goliath Artists. Bronson did it again and followed up the same year with his second independent release Well Done. Lecter, and from then on out he knew he was on to something. Bronson dropped his first independent album in 2011, Dr. In fact, he was making a big name for himself, and he was even the host of his own online cooking show before trading in his chef's hat for a microphone. He spent his time as a gourmet chef in New York City. Bronson found local fame in another way before turning his rap hobby into a career. Fortunately for fans of the rapper, Action Bronson enjoys performing for live audiences as much as he likes spending time in the studio.Īction Bronson was born Arian Asllan and lived through his childhood in Queens, New York. The album moved Bronson toward the head of the class of talented young rappers, and the momentum has only increased since that time. The rapper already had two independent releases under his belt when he signed with a major label to release the hit album Mr. Rovi Action Bronson Tickets Action Bronson TicketsĪction Bronson is establishing himself as one of the top performers on the American rap scene.

#Action bronson tour los angeles

[asllanberisha-blog]

Buying your first home is a major cornerstone in life. It presents new challenges and can be difficult to navigate through the uncharted territory. The new experience also leaves lots of room to make mistakes. When buying your first home, there are a few common mistakes to avoid.

#homebuying #real estate #asllan berisha

[bpod-bpod]

Tinkering with Thymi

When it comes to targeted attacks against invaders, T-cells reign supreme. These immune cells are made in your bone marrow but mature in your thymus (lying under your breastbone). In congenital athymia, children are born without a thymus, making infections potentially life-threatening. Current treatments are limited but now researchers investigate the possibility of recreating a human thymus in the lab. Cells were isolated from human thymi and grown in a dish to increase their numbers. Rat thymi were then isolated and cells from both of their lobes, captured using micro-CT (pictured, left), were removed by filling their blood vessels (right) with a special fluid. What remained were scaffolds of whole thymi made of extracellular matrix. The scaffolds were repopulated with human thymus cells and developed into functional human thymi, as proven by transplanting them into mice and showing that they could support T-cell maturation. This brings us closer to growing human thymus transplants.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image from work by Sara Campinoti, Asllan Gjinovci and Roberta Ragazzini, and colleagues

Epithelial Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, December 2020

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

#science #biomedicine #thymus #t cell development #t cells #congenital athymia #micro-ct #extracellular matrix #transplants

[canaryrecords]

NEW CANARY RELEASE Roza Eskenazi was born at the end of the 19th century in Constantinople. Of Sephardic Jewish descent, she settled in Thessaloniki (then a majority-Jewish city), where she worked as a cabaret dancer. In the mid-1920s she moved to Athens, where she was discovered around 1929 as a singer and began a recording career that lasted over 30 years, yielding about 350 recorded performances. A significant star during the 1930s, she narrowly survived the holocaust when 9 out of every 10 Jews in Greece were killed by the Nazis.

After the war, she restarted her career. These recordings were made ca. 1952 in Istanbul for release in the United States for the Greek-American market by Adjin Asllan's Balkan label. Shortly afterward, she made an extensive tours of the U.S., where she also recorded prolifically. Returning ultimately to Athens, her career was revived in Greece during the 60s and 70s. She died December 2, 1980.

Among the assumed accompanists throughout are Agapios Tomboulis (oud), Lambros Leonaridhis (lyra), and Sukru Tunar (clarinet).

#78rpm #78 rpm #greek #rebetika #laika #demotika

[igazikutya]

Zajok a nappaliból – Traxelektor 2020 10

Megjelenések:

Black Merlin - Genesis Preacher [2020, B.M][EP] Black Merlin - MOD IK [2020, Bitta][EP] Cult48 - Catalog 1 [2020, Self-Released][LP]

Deadbeat & The Mole - Deadbeat Meets The Mole [2020, BLKRTZ][LP] E-Saggila - Anima Bulldozer [2020, Northern Electronics][EP] Future Sound Of London, The - Cascade 2020 [2020, fsoldigital.com][LP]

Jonathan Fitoussi - Plein Soleil [2020, Obliques][LP] Sciama - Illusion Of Separation [2020, Auxiliary][LP] Tolouse Low Trax - Jumping Dead Leafs [2020, Bureau B][LP]

Új Látásmód Fúzió & Csermanek Lakótelep / Cipolla Varieté - Slágerbarátság [2020, Senkrecht][S] Various Artists - Drama Queer [2020, PAG][EP-Comp] Varuna - Mantis 04 [2020, Delsin][EP]

Yui Onodera - Ray [2020, Serein][LP]

Traxelektor:

Spotify playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3GGqgBSEq7d3sB7oeiXobB (51/69, 4:46/6:36)

Aktuális fülbemászók:

https://themagicmovement.com/track/fields-of-play-tolouse-low-trax-knights-wheels-remix

https://senkrecht.bandcamp.com/track/betonr-ma

Alessandro Adriani - SOUL (Voodoo Mix) [Drama Queer, PAG] Anatta - Fields of Play (Tolouse Low Trax Knights & Wheels Remix) [Fields Of Play, The Magic Movement] Anthony Rother - Stellarator [Stellarator Hyperway, Cultivated Electronics] Asllan - Fear (Forest On Stasys Remix) [Liberty & Death, Oslated] Attila Csihar (vov) & Livingtotem - Cyclone of Haarp [Surreal Existence, Ant-Zen]

Black Merlin - Genesis Preacher [Genesis Preacher, B.M] Black Merlin - MOD IK [MOD IK, Bitta] Black Merlin - PK 9 [MOD IK, Bitta] Cardopusher - Lux Aeterna [Drama Queer, PAG] Celldöd - En iskall omfamning [Acid Avengers 016, Acid Avengers] Cipolla Varieté - A napok csak jönnek egymás után [Slágerbarátság, Senkrecht] Cora Novoa - Virtual Aesthetics [From Above Vol. 2, Lumière Noire] Cult48 - Emoti Sahara [Catalog 1, Self-Released] Cult48 - Harbinger [Catalog 1, Self-Released] Cult48 - NoRevolution [Catalog 1, Self-Released] Cult48 - Salvia Divinorum [Catalog 1, Self-Released]

Deadbeat & The Mole - I'd Rather Be Lonely [Deadbeat Meets The Mole, BLKRTZ] Deadbeat & The Mole - Keep On Going On [Deadbeat Meets The Mole, BLKRTZ] Deadbeat & The Mole - Rollin Heavy In The Spielplaz [Deadbeat Meets The Mole, BLKRTZ] E-Saggila - Genesis Factory [Anima Bulldozer, Northern Electronics] E-Saggila - Relik [Anima Bulldozer, Northern Electronics] E-Saggila - Spectator [Anima Bulldozer, Northern Electronics] Evigt Morker - Ditt Försvinnande [Scandinavian Swords IIII: Atlas Of Visions, Northern Electronics] Jimmy Urine & Serj Tankian - Shot [Fuktronic, Serjical Strike] Jin Mustafa - Hint [Scandinavian Swords IIII: Atlas Of Visions, Northern Electronics]

Jonathan Fitoussi - Amazonie [Plein Soleil, Obliques] Jonathan Fitoussi - Soleil de Minuit [Plein Soleil, Obliques] Krokakai - Far Reaches of Decay [Strange Behavior, Silver Dollar Club] Krokakai - Foundations Edge [Unreleased Krokakai, Self-Released] Krokakai - Retina Force [Unreleased Krokakai, Self-Released] Krokakai - Waiting on Delphi [Unreleased Krokakai, Self-Released]

Livingtotem - Suspension of Climate Change [Surreal Existence, Ant-Zen] Livingtotem - The First Witch [Surreal Existence, Ant-Zen] Livingtotem - Yoshino Mausoleum [Surreal Existence, Ant-Zen]

Lucrecia Dalt - Disuelta [No Era Solida, Rvng Intl.] Middle Sky Boom - Missing Drive [From Above Vol. 2, Lumière Noire]

Nightwave - La Selva [Power Plants, Hotflush] Nightwave - Power Plants [Power Plants, Hotflush] Pinkcourtesyphone - Temporal Extravagance [Leaving Everything To Be Desired, Room 40] PRZ – Tranceiiim [Drama Queer, PAG] Pugilist - Mutual Understanding [Gradient – 2, Self-Released] Saah – Brainwave [Brainwave / Stygian, Typeless]

Sciama - Abtruser [Illusion Of Separation, Auxiliary] Sciama - Archetype [Illusion Of Separation, Auxiliary] Sciama - Illusion of Separation [Illusion Of Separation, Auxiliary]

Shakey - Crayscandens [Shakey , Palto Flats] Shakey - E Ocean [Shakey , Palto Flats] Silent Servant - Mirror [Drama Queer, PAG] Sumiruna - Griot [Griot, Merkaba] Sync24 - Hyperway [Stellarator Hyperway, Cultivated Electronics]

The Future Sound Of London - Amid the Overwhelm [Cascade 2020, fsoldigital.com] The Future Sound Of London - Cascade Part 6 [Cascade 2020, fsoldigital.com] The Future Sound Of London - Cascade Part 7 [Cascade 2020, fsoldigital.com] The Future Sound Of London - Multiple Falling Objects [Cascade 2020, fsoldigital.com] The Future Sound Of London - What Falls Away is Always [Cascade 2020, fsoldigital.com] Timothy J Fairplay - Cerro El Condor [Skylark II, Mystic & Quantum] Timothy J Fairplay - Skylark II [Skylark II, Mystic & Quantum] Tolouse Low Trax - Dawn Is Temporal [Jumping Dead Leafs, Bureau B] Tolouse Low Trax - Jumping Dead Leafs [Jumping Dead Leafs, Bureau B] Tolouse Low Trax - Sales Pitch [Jumping Dead Leafs, Bureau B]

Tramtunnel - Blue Sapphire [Lost Stones, Neurom] Tramtunnel - Wulfenite [Lost Stones, Neurom]

Új Látásmód Fúzió & Csermanek Lakótelep - Betonráma [Slágerbarátság, Senkrecht] Varuna - Pasop [Mantis 04, Delsin] Varuna - Ratu [Mantis 04, Delsin] Wata Igarashi - Homecoming [Traveling, Omnidisc] Wata Igarashi - Turbulence [Traveling, Omnidisc] Yui Onodera - Ray 1 [Ray, Serein] Yui Onodera - Ray 5 [Ray, Serein]

#traxelektor #underground #electronic #music #idm #intelligent dance music #leftfield #zene #zeneajánló

[indefinite-pitch]

Asllan - Courage (Hironori Takahashi Rework)

Buy & support on Bandcamp: Asllan - Sad Legend

#premiere #241 #asllan #hironori takahashi #sad legend #oslated #osl019

[asllan-blog2]

Asllan - Liberty & Death [OSL013]

Icnl. Forest On Stasys and Messiahwaits Remixes

01 Fear (Original Mix)

02 Death (Original Mix)

03 Rage (Original Mix)

04 Fear (Forest On Stasys Remix)

05 Death (Messiahwaits Remix)

06 Asllan (Bonus Track)

[oleandronascimento-blog]

Já que não tem gasolina⛽️ e não dá para sair de casa 🙄 vamos tomar um sol no estacionamento do prédio😬😬😂#Domingo #Greve #Sol #VitaminaD #PaiSDePet #Asllan #ihasaapso #love #happy #tksgod #tksJesus (em São Paulo, Brazil)

#sol #paisdepet #greve #love #ihasaapso #happy #tksjesus #tksgod #domingo #asllan #vitaminad

[xhemilbeharaj]

Dogjani - Demokratëve: Ju që nuk më votuat, më thoni ku kam gabuar

Dogjani – Demokratëve: Ju që nuk më votuat, më thoni ku kam gabuar

Ish-deputeti i Partisë Demokratike, Asllan Dogjani nuk është zgjedhur si anëtar i Këshillit Kombëtar të kësaj force politike në Kuvendin e thirrur në 30 prill. Ai ka kërkuar që ti japin një arsye se përse nuk e kanë votuar, duke sjellë në vëmendje se zgjedhjet e fundit parlamentare ai u votua nga 6 mijë qytetarë edhe pse ishte renditur nga fundi i listës. Postimi i plotë Të nderuar delegatë të…

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[shqiperialive]

Mbeti jashtë Këshillit të PD-së/ Ish-deputeti u 'kërkon llogari’ delegatëve: Ju që nuk më votuat më thoni...

Mbeti jashtë Këshillit të PD-së/ Ish-deputeti u ‘kërkon llogari’ delegatëve: Ju që nuk më votuat më thoni…

Ish-deputeti i PD, Asllan Dogjani mbeti jashtë Këshillit Kombëtar të Partisë Demokratike, pasi nuk mori votat e mjaftueshme për të qenë pjesë e tij. Përmes një reagimi në Facebook, ai u është drejtuar delegatëve të Kuvendit të PD duke kërkuar arsyen se përse nuk e votuan si anëtarë në këshill. “Duke u nisur nga rezultati do ju lutesha të gjithë delegatëve të Kuvendit që nuk më kanë votuar të më…

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[asllanberisha-blog]

Organizational Skills for Leadership Success

It is important to have good leadership traits but if you don’t have the proper organizational skills, you may burn out in your position. Scheduling, meetings, tasks, and managing others take a lot of organization. People find different ways to stay organized and what works for some may not work for others.

Time Management

As a leader, you are not only responsible for yourself but also a team of other employees. To be able to complete your long list of daunting tasks you have to use your time efficiently and effectively. Making sure you have enough time to finish your work in between meetings, scheduling, and arising problems is difficult. You could find it more beneficial seeing your schedule on a monitor or actually having it written on a paper calendar may be more beneficial. Find the most convenient and accessible way to keep track of your time so you do not feel rushed and overwhelmed.

Prioritizing

As a leader, many tasks are going to come across your desk. Determining which ones need to be done first and which can be left for another day is going to save you stress in the long run. Know what the difference is between what is important and what is urgent. An upset client that needs to talk to you as soon as possible is more urgent than an important report due by the end of the day. Time management comes into play with prioritizing tasks. Scheduling how to start your day with the most important tasks but being flexible enough to take on an urgent task in case it arises throughout the day. You also have the ability to delegate as a leader, prioritize what projects you are going to keep and which ones can be handed off to other team members.

Communication

Delegating, planning meetings, scheduling projects, and leading a team can be very hectic. Having consistent communication skills will help ensure your team can stay organized. You not only want to have good communication skills with your employees but also support them to communicate with you. This will ensure everyone is on the same page and improve the success of the company. It will also promote feedback and opportunity for constructive criticism. Having an open-door policy will negate the intimidation most employees feel when talking to their bosses.

Finding your way as a leader can be difficult because you have others relying on you as well. Developing strong organizational skills can, in turn, lead to a successful leadership style. Try implementing new organizational tactics in your company and see what works for you and your business.

#Asllan Berisha #leadership #entrepreneurship #organization #communication #time management #management

[canaryrecords]

The Metropolitan label was, like Nick Doneff’s Kaliphon label, an offshoot of Adjin Asllan’s Balkan label. It released some of the most niche releases of the Near Eastern immigrant community in the 1940s-50s, including the five discs made by Victoria Hazan in Ladino, nine discs in Armenian by Edward Bogosian (see the Canary album Everything is Fake), and about 26 discs in Turkish. Of the Turkish-language releases, the first eight were by Greek-speaking Balkan-roster mainstays Marko Melkon (including two sides sung by Victoria Hazan; see the Canary releases I Go Around Drinking Raki, No News From Tomorrow, and Don’t Let Me Be Lost To You B-Sides) and Virginia Magidou (see the Canary release I Was Born a Badass Chick) plus one additional disc - her only release - by one Sarah Behar (see the Canary album No News From Tomorrow).

The remaining 17 known Metropolitan discs in Turkish were credited to five performers who appear not to have recorded either before or after, all of whom have Turkish names - not Armenian, Greek, Jewish, or Albanian as all of the other artists on Balkan, Metropolitan, and Kaliphon were. Turks represented a small minority of those who emigrated from Ottoman territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Frank Ahmed's Turks in America: The Ottoman Turk's Immigrant Experience (Columbia International, 1993) and subsequent research by his student Işil Acehan indicate that Turks tended not to immigrate through New York due to discrimination against Muslims. They generally opted instead to enter the U.S. through Providence, Rhode Island. Only single men were admitted, the vast majority of whom were rural villagers who settled in the Massachusetts towns of Peabody, Salem, and Lynn where they worked primarily in the leatherworks, the population peaking shortly before WWI at just over 2,000 individuals. Nearly all of them returned to Turkey by 1930.

We have no immigration details or press references for any of the individuals on the Metropolitan label recordings, and there is no ore from within the community of those who remember stories of the music of that time and place. With once exception, the violinist Yekta Akinci (b. 1905; d. 1980) who was the son of the musician Ahmet Mükerrem Akinci, we have not been able to trace biographical data for them. They were certainly not part of the immigrant population.

Accompanied by the core Balkan-label accompanists Marko Melkon, Nick Doneff, and Garbis Bakirgian, they recorded a total of 34 sides. My first guess was that they were immigrant musicians performing, for reasons I could not begin to explain, under Turkish pseudonyms. It was the researcher Harry Kezelian who proposed that that they were touring musicians.

Near Eastern musicians (Greek, Armenian, Lebanese, etc.) who toured the U.S. during the 1940s-50s were generally “name” players who had records out, not only in the homeland but also issued in the U.S. - Rosa Eskenazi, Sami el Chawwa, Giannis Papaiouannou, Udi Hrant, etc. The mystery of how and why these Turkish performers could have shown up without some extant biographical data might be explained by an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in November, 1951 titled “Turkey Today,” presented in cooperation by Turkey's Ministry of Information. The exhibition included Turkish handicrafts and photos as well as watercolor painting by Turkish children. A press release for the show’s opening states:

On Saturday November 17th at 3:00 PM, the Brooklyn Museum will present a program of Turkish Folk Music and Songs in connection with the exhibition. Admission to the public is free.

It is our speculation at present that these five Turkish musicians (or some of them) may have been sent by the Turkish Ministry of Information to play at this Brooklyn Museum exhibition opening. (Kezelian has pointed out that Turkey was admitted to NATO only three months later; the exhibit was likely part of a goodwill campaign to strengthen ties with the West under the third president Celâl Bayar’s administration.) Whether Melkon or Doneff attended the event and met the performers there or whether Adjin Asllan’s brother Selim knew them from Istanbul, where he had lived and made recordings for the Balkan label a couple years earlier, enters into the realm of fantasy. We don’t know.

The performances themselves are stylistically typical both of Turkey's urban nightclubs of the late 40s and early 50s as well as the "oriental" nightclubs around New York's 8th Avenue, Port Said and the Brittania in particular where Doneff and Melkon worked regularly. It is easy to imagine that Melkon and Doneff relished the opportunity to exchange tunes and jam with players from the current scene of Turkey’s metropolis and took advantage of the opportunity to play with musicians who had their fingers close to the pulse of modern Turkey. The only other two immigrant players on the session were Garbis Bakirgian (b. 1884; d. 1969), a classically trained native of Istanbul, and the pianist and bandleader T. Agabey who was himself a mysterious figure on the New York scene. Agabey’s discs for Doneff’s Kaliphon label sold well enough to indicate that he was a New Yorker with a following, and his style was a unique synthesis of Turkish popular melodies with the kind of small-group pop-jazz combo format that was ubiquitous around New York bars before the advent of commonplace jukeboxes sent low-paid, union-card-holding musicians searching for work as studio sidemen or with wedding bands.

We can say with certainty that the 17 discs made by this circle of Turks did not sell well. The Turkish-speaking immigrant population of the U.S., although accustomed to buying discs on the Balkan-Kaliphon-Metropolitan circle of labels through the 1940s, being largely Armenian and Greek, did not respond enthusiastically to buying discs by these unknown Turkish performers recorded in New York even with familiar names listed on the labels as their accompanists. It seems reasonable to suppose that each of the discs was given only a single pressing of 500 copies. Surviving copies turn up infrequently, and there is marginal interest in them when they do. In the history of Near Eastern music in the U.S., they are marginalia to a footnote.

The twelve sides presented here include all four by Caylani Instanbuli Anemde, one of two unaccompanied improvisations by violinist Yekta Akinci, three of the ten sides by Ali Fasih Tekin, four of fourteen by Zeki Arikan, and, unfortunately, none of the four by Vahit Artan. The remaining sides represent not only gaps for the discographies of the obscure primary performers but also missing pieces of the work of their accompanists who are among the most significant immigrant musicians of the middle of the 20th century in New York. We hope to add to the the collection over time.

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