Ez Kî Me

Even though this is actress and singer Meral Polat's homage to her Kurdish roots, the music on her debut album, Ez Kî Me (Who Am I), is far from traditional. The skeletal grooves that underpin her powerful vocals owe more to jazz, rock and blues than to any music from the Middle East. After carving out a successful acting career for herself in the Netherlands, where Polat was born, it was a poem written for her by her father that inspired her to put his words to music and form a trio so she could perform and record them. In order to get closer to the Kurdish soul, Polat even took her two companions on a field trip to Dersim (Tunceli in Turkish), where her ancestors used to live – the site of a massacre of the Kurds in the 1930s.

The force of Polat's voice is matched by Chris Doyle on guitar, piano, organ and synthesizer, and Frank Rosaly on drums. The sparse and repetitive soundscape created by the two turns out to be exceptionally effective in enhancing the spell that Polat casts with her deeply felt rendition of her father's poetry.