Turkish Ud

Recognized worldwide as a virtuosic percussionist Burhan Öçal has made the bridging of musical cultures his central mission. A native of Kirklareli in Thrace region, he grew up in a musical family. From his father, he learned a variety of percussion instruments, while his mother introduced him to religious vocal music. After his first contact with Western music, he became interested in combining other genres and cultural traditions, such as jazz and Western classical music, with his own.

"From the first three decades of the twentieth century, the music here is so transfixing, intensely devotional and sublimely beautiful, that some contemporary listeners thought they were levitating. Drawn from recordings made in Istanbul by the Gramophone Company and HMV, amidst the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, To Scratch Your Heart crosses and mixes the folk and classical heritage of Turks, Greeks, Armenians and Gypsies, Muslims, Christians and Jews, urbanites and country-people, and the demands of tradition and modernity, musical improvisation, composition and system.