Dolapdere Big Gang, the band that consists of 9 musicians, mostly from Dolapdere, entered the music world with their first album, “Local Strangers”, with the Yakartop Music label last year. The band is covering worldwide hit pop and rock songs with Turkish instruments and “A la Turka” form. They have reached a very large amount of listeners in Turkey and all around the world.
Dolapdere Big Gang is different than other bands and they explain this by saying: “Turkey is a country that includes a lot of cultures in its structure due to its location as a bridge between Asia and Europe. Therefore it has been influenced equally by these cultures. In music, we see these influences too, but till now, our music was tried to be adapted into the western style and the world music understanding and even their rhythm. What we are doing is quite the contrary, because we understood that in order to have our music recognized all over the world, we have to make music in our own traditional way using our own instruments and musical ideas. We recomposed the songs in “our way”. Furthermore they add: “For years we have been great admirers of people’s famous music hits. Now it’s our turn. It’s time for everybody from Sting to Madonna and Deep Purple to Michael Jackson to be our admirers now.”
After releasing their first album, DBG played over 80 concerts in one year. Now, one year and a lot of hard work later, their second album has been released. “Just Feel” was put on the market on December 17th. This album, packed with surprises, reveals a new, even stronger, energetic and different sound to music lovers from all over the world.
After months of hard work and thinking about the new repertoire, the band decided not to cover songs from the artists in the first album. The new album offers its listeners more of their favourite hits in the musical unique DBG version.
In addition to 14 cover songs, DBG decided to include one original song composed by Aykut Süto--lu (clarinet) and Gökay Süngü (keyboard) with lyrics written by Emir Yesil (singer). The song is called “Oh Life” and gives listeners the first insight of how DBG’s own music will sound like. There will be more to come in the next album.
One of the biggest surprises of the album is the duets with Isin Karaca and Teoman. Isin Karaca sang the legendary song Final Countdown from Europe, and Teoman sang the Drinking Song from Helldorado.
Whilst choosing the repertoire, the band had to make sure to pick the songs their audience react to the most, these turned out to be: Alphaville’s Big in Japan, Tom Jones’s Sex Bomb, and Eddy Grant’s Gimme Hope Jo’anna.
Alongside from the original CD of the album Just Feel a “special edition box” was released. It was especially designed for collectors and fans of the band and includes the first album, “Local Strangers” as well as “Just Feel”. In addition, it includes a clock, a calendar for 2008, a bookmark and a fridge magnet.
Dolapdere Big Gang, busy with the new album, is also working on more then one project to go worldwide. We will continue informing you about the new projects of the band when they are ready. It seems like, 2008, again, will be the year of Dolapdere Big Gang.
Gimme Hope Jo'anna
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