Jason Moran’s “Ringing My Phone” (Straight Outta Istanbul) features a sampled phone conversation between a girl (his hostess) and her mother in Turkish.
In 2003 Moran was in Istanbul for giving a concert at a jazz festival. While resting in the hotel, his hostess’s mobile phone’s bell rings and she answers the phone. Her mother was calling. She starts talking to her in Turkish, Moran likes the melody and tune in her voice and records the conversation. Then plays it with piano, and puts the song in his 2003 album “The Bandwagon”.
Some comments about the song in “The Bandwagon” album (from amazon.com):
“Perhaps the most startling cut, “Ringing My Phone,” featuring a “soundtrack” of a phone conversation in Turkish (playfully subtitled “Straight Outta Istambul”) transformed into a musical statement that faithfully retains the voice-timbre of the Turkish speaker, nimbly matching on the piano the sing-song nature of the speaker’s voice, brilliantly documents Moran’s high-wire approach to both his instrument and his group conception.” — By Jan P. Dennis “Longboard jazzer”
“If you think “Ringing My Phone” is a groundbreaking masterpiece as heard on the CD, I can assure you that seeing it performed live (before I had ever heard it before) was among the most exhilarating experiences *of my entire life*.” — By “dsams5”
“Jason makes an explicit link that so many jazz greats (most notably Coltrane) had in the background all the time – the melody is speech. Ringing my Phone is a brilliant working out of the “Love Supreme” principle. It really grooves too, which is no mean accomplishment.” — By Robert Davidson “Topology rob”
Notes
Jason Moran (born January 21, 1975, in Houston, Texas) is a jazz pianist and composer. He is a musical adviser for jazz at the Kennedy Center.
Moran debuted as a bandleader with the 1999 album Soundtrack to Human Motion. Since then, he has garnered much critical acclaim and won a number of awards for his playing and compositional skills, which combine elements of stride piano, avant-garde jazz, classical music, hip hop, and spoken word, among others. In 2010, he was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Sources
Jason Moran on Wikipedia
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