In the sidebar I recently added a new tag for West/Central Asia.

Turkey is a growing presence among my posts, so far including

• Köçek in Kuzguncuk
• Kuzguncuk: nostalgia for cosmopolitanism
• Turkey: what everyone needs to know
• Midnight at the Pera Palace
• The kiosk in Turkey and Europe
• Songs of Asia Minor (cf. Road to rebetika, and Folk traditions of Greece)
• The Janissary band
• Bartók in Anatolia
• The Armenian genocide
• The Pontic lyra
• Musicking of the yayla
• Epiphany in Istanbul
• Attending Greek liturgy in Istanbul
• In praise of Fatma Yavuz
• The Greek–Turkish population expulsions
• Early Turkish verismo
• The films of Yilmaz Güney
• The Club
• Ethos: one of a kind
• A revolutionary female journalist
• A stammering Byzantine Iconoclast
• Bektashi and Alevi ritual, 1: Istanbul
• Bektashi and Alevi ritual, 2: Anatolia
• Alevi ritual in Istanbul, 2
• Querying the notion of gender equality in Alevism
• Self-mortification ritual in the Balkans
• Sufism: Naqshbandi ritual
• The Janissary tree
• The call to prayer
• A blind accordionist
• The tanners of Zeytinburnu
• Sawdust in Tophane
• Landscapes of music in Istanbul
• Istanbul: multisensorial experiences
• Musicking in Ottoman Istanbul
• Madonna in a fur coat
• The Time Regulation Institute
• Rom, Dom, Lom
• Kaliarda, Lubunca, Polari
• Small—Far Away
• Inter-faith ping-pong
• Some unlikely Turkish vocabulary
• Dabbling in Turkish
• Turkish jazz in London!
• Ostinato: jazz in Istanbul
• Jazz in Turkey
• Anatolia: a rural woman singer
• New sounds from Anatolia
• Anatolian bards rock
• Cem Mansur and Western Art Music in Turkey
• Summertime
• Futbol in Turkey, then and now
• Following Miss Bell,

with more to follow…

Some posts on Kurdish culture (besides The films of Yilmaz Güney):

• Some Kurdish bards
• Self-mortification: dervishes of Kurdistan
• Aynur: Kurdish popular music
• Arabesk: Dilber Ay
• Kurdish culture in London.

For a wide-ranging journey, see

• From the holy mountain.

Elsewhere, by way of

• Zithers of Iran and Turkey,

I may list

• Reviving culture: the Yazidis
• Musics of Crete
• Everyday life in a Syrian village
• For Sama
• Aleppo: music and trauma
• Iranian lives
• Iran: Women, Life, Freedom in film
• New musics in Iran
• Shawm bands of Lorestan
• Iran: chamber music
• Central Asia: shashmaqom at SOAS
• Leyli and Majnun
• Gurdjieff and the Truth Seekers
• The Kazakh famine
• Three women of Herat, and sequel
• Indian and world fiddles
• Sir Harold Bailey and his cat.

Women of Herat https://stephenjones.blog/2018/10/29/women-of-herat/

Click here for Fatima Manji’s fine book on Britain’s historical affinity with west and south Asia—and the current xenophobia. Posts on Uyghur culture (with separate tag) are rounded up here. For a remarkable gathering of performers from the whole vast region, click here.