Nara

Senem Diyici has a long career making music, having started recording her songs in 1969, before going on to develop a style of crossing boundaries between traditional Turkish music, jazz and rock. With her new release Nara, however, she breaks a ten-year absence from the recording studio.

The title-track starts off beautifully, with a lush string arrangement by Ersin Ersavas and the varied timbres of guitar, oud and trumpet. The style is less overtly jazz than previous albums such as Takalar, that had the plentiful improvisation and vivid sense of spontaneous interplay that the best jazz has. Nevertheless, first impressions are of a warm and sophisticated fusion of Turkish and ‘Western’ styles.

The songs on Nara (meaning a fire or cry) speak about female self-realisation and our interactions with the natural world. With a variety of percussive styles, they nevertheless struggle to break out from a constant, pedestrian pace, only picking up slightly on the final track. Diyici's voice also lacks variety and expressiveness, maintaining a rather shrill falsetto throughout the 11 songs. It's a great shame for an album that begins with such promise.