49 f
Dila V & The Odd Beats
amazing voices and thought ‘A Bulgarian choir? In the middle of Scotland?’ I went over and invited them to join us on stage. And straight away, it was just amazing.”
UK one-man Moroccan gnawa indus- try Simo Lagnawi features on the track Chubby. “We’d recorded it and just thought it lacked something. Some soul. Then we realised it just needed karabak- abs (North African metal castanets). So, we got Simo in and it was just a billion times better. Such a tiny thing, completely changed the song.”
So why Eastern music in East London?
“I think there’s a particular spirit in East London and a particular spirit in all those Eastern musics: very passionate, upbeat, expressive and also… difficult! So, musical- ly people are interested because they get to play these tough songs in weird time sig- natures and scales with quartertones. But at the same time, the music is full of stories, with a power that attracts people.”
L
ondon-based Turkish singer Dila Vardar once passed through the ranks of The Tur- bans, but is now exploring Turkish folk and psych with her own band, the aptly named Odd Beats. Originally from Istanbul, Dila came to the UK aged seventeen to study acting. She’s appeared on stage and screen since but ended up making singing her priority. “I was living in a place with lots of musi- cians,” she tells me when we talk back- stage at a festival in Brixton. “I always liked singing and was part of a choir
when I was younger, so that became my main focus. Then I sang backing vocals with Morski, who later became the singer with the Turbans. We would sing these songs which he knew in Bulgarian and I knew in Turkish. He was and still is a very big influence on the kind of music I want to make. But I’m influenced by many gen- res. I enjoy singing Cuban music, Turkish, Greek… anywhere that has the right bal- ance of pain and joy.”
The Odd Beats were originally a most- ly female, very folky quintet when they formed five years ago. “We’ve developed our own sound over the years. I met our guitarist Fathi at a festival about three and a half years ago and he’s got a very unusu- al use of the wah-wah pedal and effects when he plays. So, when he joined, we ended up doing much more psychedelic versions of Turkish folk songs.”
Ah, Turkish psych, the flavour of the month amongst crate-digging hipsters. “It is here,” agrees Dila. “In the 1970s there were lots of bands playing Turkish folk songs in psychedelic ways, but it wasn’t a big scene in Turkey, it was kind of like an underground thing. And I’ve become a lot more aware of it since I came to the UK.”
Circumstances have led her and the band to embrace those funky psychedelic sounds. “We play a lot of music festivals and we generally play 2 or 3 a.m. slots, when people want to dance and we’re playing really unusual rhythms that are not that easy to dance to unless you’re used to it. So, it kind of became our mis-
sion to make it danceable and enjoyable and make it easy for people.”
Unsurprisingly, the Odd Beats have developed a mutual appreciation society with Istanbul’s kindred musical spirits Baba Zula, although Dila’s at pains to point out that this is a comparatively recent connec- tion and when developing their sound, they were doing so in isolation. As well as Turkish musicians, The Odd Beats’ ranks have included an Italian, a Canary Islander and a Greek bassist, all bringing different influences. “We play a mixture of tradi- tional material and originals. But all given those strange Odd Beats arrangements and time signatures. It really all comes out of us jamming at six in the morning at a festival and then just seeing what happens and making a song out of it.”
Dila is a hard woman to pin down
musically. Her other ongoing project is Band Of Burns. That’s Burns as in Robert. She was introduced to his poetry while jamming with Scottish musicians and dis- covered that, rather than the staid figure she’d always imagined him to be, Burns was a radical with much to say that’s still relevant today. The thirteen-piece Band of Burns includes members of the Odd Beats, The Langan Band, Honeyfeet and PicaPica (see elsewhere this issue) to name but a few, with Dila upfront, offering her dis- tinctively Turkish-flavoured interpretations of Burns songs.
theturbans.co.uk theoddbeats.com
donkipper.com
F
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
