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Kind of a strange topic. But these areas and are all home to large populations of Turkic speakers. So thought I'd create a little thread for em. For purposes of this topic, Central Asia may include "the stans" (e.g. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.), and also Mongolia. And possibly some parts of Northwestern China.

Post as often as you like here. But please put each video, audio track or album in a separate post. And post only authorized and official content by the artists or their labels whenever possible.

 

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I've listened to alot of Turkish pop in the last 5-10 years, and some of the more well-known artists include: Bengu, Betul Demir, Demet Akalin, Ebru Polat, Funda Arar, Gulben Ergen, Gulsen, Irem Derici, Hadise, Hande Yener, Mabel Matiz, Merve Ozbey, Serdar Ortac, Sibel Can, Sila, Soner Sarikabadayi, Tarkan, Zara (who does folk & some pop), and Ziynet Sali.

 

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The above list is probably biased toward the ladies btw. (Mabel, Serdar, Soner & Tarkan are the only men.) I like work by all the above though.

Tarkan routinely gets high views on his videos. And Gulsen scored a fairly big hit a few years ago with this ditty. (SQ is a little weak on this.)

 

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Recent track by Demet Akalin that's pretty good...

 

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Recent Hande Yener & Serdar Ortac. Vid contains some adultish content.

 

[wuwhere]

 

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Ebru has a little 3D fun with the black bars (aka "letterboxing" to cinema buffs) on this track...

 

[wuwhere]

 

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Beautiful music...

Very nice piece, wuwhere. I've only scratched the surface of many countries in Central Asia. So I'll be very curious to hear what others are listening to from that region, as well as the Caucasus.

 

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Slightly OT, but you might find this doc on the eagle hunters of Mongolia of some interest.

 

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Original version of "Gobi" from The Story of the Weeping Camel OST, posted by wuwhere above. This has the full intro (which is quite nice), and a little better SQ I think than the previous version.

Boertemusic - "Gobie"

Only plays on YT.

 

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A couple other fun lady Mongolian groups I ran across while searching for the above...

Shanz 3 is named after the traditional Mongolian 3-stringed guitar the ladies all play, which is called a shanz (or shudraga in Mongolian).

 

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Behi, a similar ethno-rock group that also uses the shanz and some other traditional instruments.

 

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The novelty of groups like this tends to wear off for me. But I like the way elements of old & new are often blended in this region. And work like above can be a nice change of pace from the usual Asian pop fare. There's a similar ethno-metal band in Japan called Wagakki that's quite good imo.