Meral Polat Trio

Kurdish folk music, raw groove and minimalistic blues arrangements returns to Prague.

Singer and actress Meral Polat was born in the Netherlands, where her parents immigrated from Turkey to work. Her father was formally a gastarbaiter, but a poet at heart. Meral set his lyrics to music on her very special debut album. The singer's ancestors come from the Kurdish Alevi community, which, unlike the Islamic mainstream, allows for critical thinking and relies on individuality and education. Meral Polat draws not only on Kurdish melodies, but also on Greek, Turkish and Persian ones, with accompaniment by equally unique players. Chris Doyle, a Berklee graduate and member of the Grammy-nominated Afrobeat band Antibalas, plays keyboards. Drummer Frank Rosaly, originally from Puerto Rico, draws from Caribbean rhythms, classical music and jazz. In 2018, he performed at Prague's Punctum with the improvisational trio Rempis / Stadhouders / Rosaly. While the accompaniment creates a sharply rhythmic but instrumentally minimal groove, the vocals are packed with dramatic twists, microtonal shifts and melodic embellishments typical of Middle Eastern music.