The interviews and music below are excerpted from those documentaries. Disclosure links to the relevant paragraph in my Tales article in this issue of EOL follow each of the ethnic subheadings below. Turkish Turks count as one of the smallest minorities in America. Of an estimated 100,000 Turks there, most earn a living as doctors, engineers, and in the professions. They tend to blend in with the majority culture.
Turkish associations are weak and generally show little interest in Turkish music and culture.
In their isolation, individual Turks go to extraordinary lengths to reach out for music of their homeland. Only in America, Tamer said, would he have played music with an Arab. When I recorded him in October 1981, he had been in America for four years. He worked as a computer programmer in Berkeley, California. The most characteristic Cretan dance music he would have played is the pentozali .