A collection of spellbinding, melismatic vocal improvisations taken from 78s cut between the mid 1920s to mid '30s - a period defined by the aftermath of the Ottoman Empire’s partition, the Greco-Turkish War and the compulsory population exchange that followed.

This same period also represented a time of intense efforts, following the establishment of the Republic, to westernise the new nation's music - coupled with a ban on traditional music education in schools, and later a complete ban on broadcasting Ottoman-Turkish classical music on the radio. As such these performances seem shrouded in an even more distant past, and feel quite intimately connected with forms of Greek amanes and rebetiko - having stemmed from the same Ottoman makam system, both with a subject-matter focussed on heartbreak, yearning, and pain.

A1. Hafız Sadettin Kaynak - Falling into the Flames of Heartbreak
A2. Hâfız Burhan - Everywhere is Darkness
A3. Hafız Kemal Bey - The Moment I Saw You
A4. Hoca Izak Algazi - If I Gave My Heart to You
A5. Hafız Sadettin Kaynak - I Fell in Love
A6. Hafız Kemal Bey - The Sky Cries
A7. Hafız Sadettin Kaynak - The Pain of Separation
B1. Tarsuslu Abdülkerim - I Waited for So Many Nights
B2. Hafız Kemal Bey - A Gaze that Gathers the Blossoms of Longing
B3. Bursalı Hamid Bey - I Became the Guardian of my Own Gaze
B4. Hafız Kemal Bey - The Dagger of Gazes
B5. Hoca Izak Algazi - My Heart’s Sole Longing was to Find its Harbor Through Love
B6. Hafız Kemal Bey - With Longing Because Of This
B7. Hafız Sadettin Kaynak - O My Beloved, Drunk With Your Own Charm, Who Raised You To Be So Fearless