Ya Zaman”, (O Good Old Days), is a bouquet of twelve melodic tracks. Mike Massy’s magnum opus is the result of many years of work and research. It’s a journey that starts from the oriental rhythms of the Tabla, the Bendir and the Riq, embraces the sensual sounds of the Qanun and Oud, and goes to the elegance of the piano and the baroque harmonies. His voice is veiled in sensuality covered by both oriental and occidental vocal techniques.
Mike Massy describes his album as “a Northern boy carrying a Southern heart”. His texts embrace the tales of love, life, the good old days, and his native country.
Poetry is intertwined in daily life in music which is unpretentiousness and uncomplicated– earthbound but aspiring to celestial evocation. Poetics is blended with daily life in a music which is far from pretentiousness, a music rooted in the lived experience of autochthonous life. Simple but not naïve, melodic but not superficial, majestic but not ostentatious, modest without a hint of meanness, nostalgic but not sad….
That is the soul of YA ZAMAN!
In this album, Mike Massy offers us a new approach: an eclectic fusion of the nostalgic melodies of the East, the rigorous harmonies of baroque, and the elemental roots of jazz rhythms.
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