Free Concert: Ottoman Turks

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Ottoman Turks was born in 2009. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Nathan Mongol Wells sat in his bathroom (the most isolated room in the house), laptop resting on an open counter drawer, and began a solo project. He was fresh off a high school study-abroad trip that took him to the Middle East, where the bus trips and connecting flights between classes and museum visits offered ample and ideal hours of idle to delve deep into an iPod filled with new genres and artists – Tom Waits, Howlin’ Wolf, classic country greats. The idiosyncratic songs of these masters filtered in through the complex history and culture in which he’d been steeping for a month and sparked an idea.

The thought of writing music like that was exciting, but with standards so tied to the time in which they were written, what would they mean in a modern context? The idea was to reframe tradition, push and pull genre limitations, while retaining the simplicity, kinetic energy, the raw joy and sorrow of classic standards. It was exciting. Anything seemed possible. In searching for a name, his mind naturally drifted over the month of travel and learning in the Middle East, finally settling on Ottoman Turks. The name was evocative of another time and place, of a culture that transcended boundaries, unified nationalities, and became a melting pot of ideas. At the time, it was the perfect representation of the seed that had been planted for his musical plan. Later learning about the Armenian Genocide, the band chose to keep the name and use it as an opportunity for discussion and, hopefully, healing.

Categories: Art & Culture / Community / Downtown Outdoors / Family Fun / FREE / Music