Çiğdem Aslan has enjoyed an intriguing career. Brought up in Istanbul in a Kurdish family, she moved to London to study music, joined the klezmer band She’Koyokh and then went solo, winning an award for her debut album. She specialised in rebetiko, the “Balkan blues” that flourished in the 1920s, and for her stories of a mortissa, a flirtatious and staunchly independent woman of the era. A Thousand Cranes, a title influenced by a soulful lament about migratory birds and parting, broadens her range, and establishes her as one of the finest, most emotional singers of the region. Recorded in Athens, and co-produced by Nicolaos Baimpas, who also provides the arrangements and fine solo work on the kanun, the set ranges from sad, stately love songs to the rousing mortissa tribute Cheeky Lili (“As much hashish as you puff, you won’t coax me’). An impressive return.
