A thousand cranes

"Çiğdem Aslan has enjoyed an intriguing career. Brought up in Istanbul in a Kurdish family, she moved to London to study music, joined the klezmer band She'Koyokh and then went solo, winning an award for her debut album. She specialised in rebetiko, the "Balkan blues" that flourished in the 1920s, and for her stories of a mortissa, a flirtatious and staunchly independent woman of the era. A Thousand Cranes, a title influenced by a soulful lament about migratory birds and parting, broadens her range, and establishes her as one of the finest, most emotional singers of the region".

Read review

"London-based Turkish singer Çigdem Aslan made quite a splash with her debut album "Mortissa" three years ago, but this follow-up is in a different league altogether. Using the migraqtory habits of the crane (the bird...) as a metaphor for her own musical travels, Aslan draws on a whole range of Mediterranean and Balkan influences with the support of a top-notch quartet (...), three-quarters of [which] are Greek. Aslan has long celebrated Turkey and Greece's shared history of musical culture, especially found in the Anatolian region ... Aslan's voice is supple and powerful ... The interplay of the musicians behind her is, at times, breathtaking ... The repertoire is mostly traditional. Highlights include "Tourna (Crane)" (...), a real heart-melter of a ballad featuring guest vocals from Greece's Matoula Zamani, and the eastern tango of "Zaira" (on which Aslan hits some particularly lovely notes)".