Week Thirty-Nine: Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week “Hungarian Gypsy Persian in G”

Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week airs EVERY WEDNESDAY at 6pm Eastern ONLY on RadioRadioX.com

This is Jesse Sample. The east has been calling me for a long time. I’ve read books and listened to podcasts about history of Rome and the most intriguing part of the story for me is the split to the east and the founding of Constantinople, what in now Istanbul in modern day Turkey. One of my favorite classes at Berklee was a music history class and we studied early liturgical music and, naturally, Byzantine Chant appealed to me the most.

Eastern Europe and the western parts of the middle east have always enchanted me and sparked my imagination. When I think of this region of the world, I think of Romania and Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the exotic markets and bazaars of Turkey. This space is a doorway between different worlds. It’s not fully western like NYC or London, but it’s not fully Eastern like Tokyo or Shang Hai. It remains mysterious in my mind.

The closest that I’ve ever been to Istanbul or Bucharest is Vienna. But I could feel it on the horizon. It’s a song that haunts me.

This week I’ve tried a few things. Jim Dooley performed the percussion on a Darbuka, which is a hand-played drum of a Turkish origin. I employed harmonies and melodies derived of a “Hungarian Gypsy Persian” scale in the key of G. Lastly, I applied simple vocal tracks emulating the drone that might be found in early polyphonic chant.

Thanks to all of you tuned into RadioRadioX. This is the Freak of the Week, “Hungarian Gypsy Persian in G.”