Tomatoes! Peppers! Aubergines!
a post about learning languages using music (but I will sneak in a link to a recipe)
Many, many years ago, I learned the names of some fruits in Spanish through a song on Sesame Street. Amazingly, I still remember part of that song today, and if I ever have to remember the Spanish word for “apple”, I actually need to sing the chorus in my head. Here’s the song, nicely remastered for Youtube:
There are so many mnemonic tricks used in that song; rhyme and rhythm and repetition and rearranging the word order. The catchy Mariachi-style tune is the main hook that leads me into the rest of the memories, even though I found on re-watching the video today that the tune as I remember it has drifted away from the original over time.
I’ve used some of those memory tricks elsewhere since then. For example in first-year chemistry class we were told to memorise the first 30 elements of the Periodic Table; my friend shared the little sing-song rhythm that he’d set the elements to, and I still mentally run through that rhyme if I need to recall the first-row transition metals (here apostrophes are placed before syllables that are to be emphasised and roughly evenly spaced to form the beat):
`He, `hee, li-`beb se-`nof
`Ne, `na, ma-`galsips `klar
K-`kask `tiv `kr-mn
`Feeko `neeku `zink
The above spelling is changed to be more phonetic, but when I recite it in my head, it’s spelled using the actual element symbols, like this:
H He LiBeB CNOF
Ne Na MgAlSiPS ClAr
KCaSc TiV CrMn
FeCo NiCu Zn
The syllables are of course complete nonsense, but when put to a rhythm like this I can still remember them even now, decades later.
It won’t be surprising then, when I admit to searching for simple children’s songs in Turkish on Youtube, looking for ones that will stick in my memory for one reason or another and teach me something useful. I found the LALALA Dünyası channel on Youtube when I was researching my earlier Pirate post, and it’s full of good stuff by some famous Turkish names. Here are a few educational bangers that I can serve up as a support act before I move on to the fruit-related headline show (which is the guy in this artwork, just to whet your appetite).
The first support act is the very catchy sea shanty I hinted at above, with a cute little animation to go along with it. Unfortunately embedding is disabled for the videos on this channel, so click here to watch on Youtube.
One interesting thing I’ll note from the lyrics (you can read them below the Youtube video) is the Turkish idiom “gece gündüz demeden […]” which means “do […] without interruption”. More literally something like “do […] before checking whether the clock says day or night”.
The most linguistically interesting word from the lyrics is of course that ancient word “heyamola”, roughly equivalent to “Yo ho heave ho” in English; you can see my earlier post for more detail on this and other pirate vocabulary:
The next example song is a lullaby, sung by “The Queen of Turkish Pop”1 Sezen Aksu. Where else, apart from a children’s song, would you learn what sound to make in Turkish to illustrate a butterfly fluttering along? (it’s “pır pır pır”)
The final example is a song with accompanying actions, something like “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”. I mention it not just for the excellent violin breaks, but also because it features the following lines of nonsense words:
Raba raba rip
Riba rim bam bom
Syllables beginning with <r> seem to be a common way to talk scat in traditional Turkish music. Compare for example the traditional song “Yayla Çiçeği misin” (sung beautifully acapella here by “Samida”):
Hoppa rina rinanay
Ray da rinanay
Rinanay yarim
Rinanay nay
I guess you could also use that “Hareket Oyunu” song to learn the difference between “aşağı” (“down”) and “yukarı” (“up”), but my personal recommendation there is to instead memorise this most excellent Turkish idiom, meaning something like “caught between a rock and a hard place”:
Aşağı tükürsem sakal, yukarı tükürsem bıyık
If I spit down, beard; if I spit up, mustache
Here it is spoken by Kaan Yalçın, as Öktem Bey in Kuruluş: Osman (Youtube link):2
But enough of that; I want to talk about Barış Manço. A true legend of Turkish musical history, as part of a long career he ventured into children’s TV and music in the late 1980’s. His 1989 album Darısı Başınıza has some of his more whimsical kid-friendly music. I present to you a recently updated version of his classic hit (and instant earworm) “Domates Biber Patlıcan”:
There is so much to love about this song. That memorable chorus of “Tomatoes! Peppers! Aubergines!” is more than just a way to learn the ingredients of some very famous Turkish dishes. There’s a proper story in the lyrics, which are helpfully provided as hardcoded subtitles so you can sing along with the video. It’s a song about a boy who loves a girl, but he can’t find the words to confess his love. Finally he gathers all his courage and takes her hand… and then the moment is interrupted by the cry of the street vendor selling vegetables:
“Domates, biber, patlıcan!”
“Domates, biber, patlıcan!”
Bir anda bütün dünyam karardı
Bu sesle sokaklar yankılandı:
“Domates, biber, patlıcan!”“Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines!”
“Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines!”
Suddenly my whole world went dark
The streets echoed with this sound:
”Tomatoes, peppers, aubergines!”
It’s hard to overstate how influential Barış Manço was for Turkish music. For example the experiment with reggae style in this song was a novelty for Turkish music at the time, and he was also known for influencing the use of electronic music in Türkiye - hear more of this in the original version of the song (Youtube link). He toured with this song internationally, particularly in Japan, where he was apparently known as "the man who writes songs about vegetables" - a second song from the same album is titled "Nane, Limon Kabuğu" (“Mint, Lemon Rind”).3
But his real influence goes back much further than that. He is considered one of the founding fathers of the Anatolian Rock genre, a psychedelic fusion of Western Rock instruments with Turkish Folk, that was a rebellion against the Ottoman music of the old Empire. Here’s one of his most famous songs; “Dağlar Dağlar” (1970):4
I am seriously amazed though, at the music that these guys were coming up with in Anatolia in the 60’s and 70’s, that few in the West have heard. There is no finer place for you to correct this oversight, than the Anatolian Rock Revival Project. Available on Spotify/Soundcloud etc., but I like to watch instead their Youtube videos which feature the most excellent custom artwork for each song. Check out this instrumental track by Barış Manço’s contemporaries from the band “Moğollar” to appreciate the creativity of some legendary Turkish hippies, while enjoying the artwork from Özgür Erman:
(The title of that track, “Sunset on the Estuary”, refers to the body of water in Istanbul known as the Golden Horn)
With so much to discover, you can spend a long time on that channel. I will point out just one more example, as it’s both a personal favourite of mine and a song you may have heard sampled by another artist more recently.
The duo responsible for that haunting riff are Mazhar Alanson and Fuat Güner. They apparently had the same eye-opening experience that everyone else did when The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album dropped, and started playing Beatles and Stones covers in a band called “Kaygısızlar”. They developed their new style, hanging out with Barış Manço in the late 60s and recording some songs with him in Europe, before “Kaygısızlar” disbanded and they released an album and some singles (including the above) as “Mazhar ve Fuat”. Moving around various projects for the rest of the 70s, Fuat played guitar for Barış Manço’s band “Kurtalan Ekspres” on occasion. In 1980 Mazhar and Fuat joined with former “Kaygısızlar” bass player Özkan Uğur to form the trio “MFÖ”, whose commercial success included two Eurovision appearances. Their most recent album together was Kendi Kendine (2017).
If the riff from “Adımız Miskindir Bizim” sounds familiar, you may have heard it sampled by American rapper Action Bronson in “Easy Rider” (2014):
According to Wikipedia, she has sold over 40 million albums worldwide.
Kuruluş: Osman 116. Bölüm; timestamp 1:01:30
I loved this video of one of his concerts in Japan, showing him joking with the audience in their own language, and explaining the somewhat unusual 5/4 time signature of the song "Nane, Limon Kabuğu". (His word play is on the Turkish word “tabii” (“of course; naturally”) and the Japanese footwear known as “tabi”)
The original 45rpm single had two versions of “Dağlar Dağlar”; here is the other one.
Great post! The first concert I've ever been was of Barış Manço when I was 3, which I barely remember; and the first album I've ever bought was Vak the Rock from MFÖ when I was 7.
Some trivia: after Mazhar & Fuat but before MFÖ, they were Ìpucu Beşlisi (Clue Quintet) for a while with pianist Galip Boransu and larger than life percussionist Ayhan Sicimoğlu, about whom they'll later compose Peki Peki Anladık (ok ok we understand) https://youtu.be/ECaFczpklmY
The song is about a show off know it all who claims he's the best about anything, but Ayhan Sicimoğlu still took this gracefully and himself arranged the song. This is in the same album as Adımız Miskindir Bizim. There's also New York Sokaklarında (In the Streets of New York) in the same album which is one of the first Latin music influenced Turkish songs.
Ayhan Sicimoğlu still does travelogue shows, leads a Latin music band, and is an all around great character which is difficult to describe.
If you liked Adımız Miskindir Bizim, you'll probably also like Bazen (Sometimes) https://youtu.be/D63ROx0Pij8 which is a complete different style than the Sufi inspired Adımız Miskindir Bizim, but still shares a vibe.
When MFÖ was still not known nationwide, they composed and were playing the soundtrack to a dark comedy live theater show called Şahları da Vururlar (They shoot Shahs too) about the Iranian revolution. Their first hit that carried them to fame was a song from there with new lyrics. https://youtu.be/4DZbURvoDEc The play was by Ferhan Şensoy, one of the most prominent actors and authors. After the soundtrack of the play became famous as a rock album, they needed a new soundtrack and found a new up and coming band for it, who later went on to be another giant of Turkish rock music, Bulutsuzluk Özlemi (Longing for Cloudlessness), who take their name from a newspaper article by human rights activist professor Mümtaz Soysal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCmtaz_Soysal?wprov=sfla1 writing about political executions of young leftist activists by military junta; saying the boys were just longing for cloudlessness.
Mazhar is the stylical and lyrical genius of the band with musical creativity. Fuat is the one with theoretical musical knowledge and keeping together everything including legal or financial. Özkan is the crazy one, the soul of the band with the inventions and incredible stage performance. He's also an excellent actor and my favourite of the band. Unfortunately he's been battling cancer for over a decade and fortunately he's been winning for long, but recently he had to be hospitalized. I hope he gets well soon.