After living in Rome, London and Munich, Turkish-born Duygu Gün landed in the Mission in 2016 and set out to find her people.
Born and raised in the southeastern city of Mersin on the Mediterranean, she grew up in a world where identities were often multifarious and buffeted by turbulent history, with a paternal line hailing from Crete. The guitarist and vocalist “was trying to find a community,” she said in a recent conversation from her new home in Bernal Heights.
“I missed Europe and that intercultural environment, and then I saw a Kafana Balkan party, but it was sold out,” said Gün, referring to a monthly Balkan music showcase that has long served as a hub for the Bay Area scene (while often attracting top musicians from New York and beyond). Even though she couldn’t get into the event at the Rickshaw Stop, Gün connected with some fellow musicians and started sitting in at the Sunday Balkan jam sessions at (now sadly defunct) Revolution Café.
“I found the people,” she said, admitting she’s still surprised “that the scene is so vibrant. It’s hard to find these jams in Turkey. It’s so interesting to find it here.”
Gün, whose name is pronounced doo-EE-goo Goon, didn’t just find a scene here. She’s playing a key role in celebrating and championing it as the creative director of the feature-length documentary “Balkancisco,” which makes its theatrical U.S. premiere Sunday, June 23 at Gray Area’s Grand Theater.
Directed by Tugrul Sarikaya, “Balkancisco” explores the Bay Area’s contemporary Balkan music scene, which brings together musicians born to the overlapping traditions in former the Ottoman Empire territories of Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and the former Yugoslav republics, as well as American musicians drawn to Roma and Balkan music. While the fractious history and competing nationalisms of Southern Europe gave birth to the concept of balkanization, in the diaspora the shared musical heritage serves as a binding force.
“Our music is so mixed, it’s hard to tell where it’s from, sometimes,” Gün said. “Roma people travel all the time. There’s this maqam influence with different scales” from classical Arabic music. “That’s why it feels like home for a lot of people.”
A Mission nonprofit that supports multi-disciplinary collaboration in the neighborhood, Gray Area is hosting the “Balkancisco” event, which kicks off at 4 p.m. with a Q&A led by Gün, and the screening followed by a procession to Bissap Baobab led by the 10-piece Balkan brass band Fanfare Zambaleta.
“Brass bands are known for parades, so after we show the film, we’ve got Fanfare Zambaleta leading everyone down Capp Street from 22nd to Bissap Baobab at 19th,” Gün said. “After Revolution Café closed, we went to Amado for a while, and now we’re doing Balkan Sundays at Bissap Baobab, which is such an important community center.”
The film features many of the scene’s leading figures, including multi-instrumentalist Dan Cantrell, Macedonian-born clarinet virtuoso and leader of the New York Gypsy All-Stars Ismail Lumanovski, trumpeter and Balkan Bump band leader Will Magid, Inspector Gadje manager and drummer Marco Peris, Serbia-born DJ and Kafana Balkan founder Zeljko Petkovic, cultural anthropologist and Roma folklorist Carol Silverman, and Bulgarian-born Roma music master Rumen “Sali” Shopov.
Gün performs with accordionist Jonathan Kipp in the duo Nakarat, performing songs in Turkish, Ladino, Greek, Griko and Italian (“I’ve always loved learning languages,” she said). The appeal of Balkan music lies “in the beats, the odd rhythms,” she said.
With so much current activity to cover, “Balkancisco” doesn’t delve much into the history of Balkan music in the Bay Area, which first gained a following outside of immigrant communities in the 1950s as part of the international folk-dance movement. In the 1970s, a new generation of musicians rediscovered the music of their parents and grandparents, a broad revival that encompassed an array of roots traditions, from klezmer and Cajun music to Balkan brass and women’s choral ensembles (like Oakland’s Kitka).
Not surprisingly, Berkeley has long been a Balkan music hotbed, with dance and music a regular part of the programming at Ashkenez since the folk-dance venue was founded in 1973. The Irish pub Starry Plough also hosts the monthly Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal, where Gün has performed with Nakarat. But she generally doesn’t have to cross the bay.
“Balkan Sundays have always been in the Mission,” she said. “There’s been a Greek dance party at Joe Goode Annex every Monday. The folk dance scene tends to be a generation or two older, but there’s some mixing, and there are other Balkan parties we don’t hear about. It’s a subculture in a subculture.”
With “Balkancisco,” that vibrant subculture is breaking out of the Mission.
A veteran saxophonist at Black Cat
The Tenderloin nightspot Black Cat has become the essential outpost for catching New York jazz musicians on the rise. The club’s calendar is regularly filled by players in their 20s and 30s booked for three or four-night runs, residencies that are precious few and far between these days.
Every once in a while, Black Cat brings in a veteran player, like this week’s four-night stand featuring tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm’s trio. Now on faculty at Texas State University, Frahm spent three decades in New York, performing regularly with brilliant improvisers such as pianist Brad Mehldau, drummer Matt Wilson and bassist Omer Avital. He possesses a beautiful, lithe middleweight tone and a deep well of melodic themes. For his Black Cat residency, Frahm is performing with his trio featuring bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Ernesto Cervini.
