Apologies & Music About Oil Fields

Dear Reader,

For some inexplicable reason, this blog has been left untouched for a month since the last post about the Oil Blocks and Brunei. During that time, the world has witnessed oil in the news. Perhaps we will deal with these topics in the coming week, whenever I find the time. The big topic, internationally, is the oil spill from BP, which has wreaked havoc off the Gulf of Mexico. It looks like the environmentalists are busy trying to clean up the birds who have been caught in the oil slick. Locally, an oil spill took place in Singapore and part of it floated to Malaysia. (Ref: The Star, 28th May 2010. Singapore oil spill spreads to Malaysian waters.) The local oil spill took place when MT Bunga Kelana 3 collided with MV Waily in the Singapore Straits. 37,000 litres of oil have been collected off our Malaysian shoreline. (Ref: The Star, 6th June 2010. 37,000 litres of oil spill cleaned up.)

I came across the website of a Turkish musician, Derya Yavuz, who has made his instrumental album available online for free listening. The album, "Bir Damla Kum", means "A Grain of Sand". The songs are apparently about the oil fields and there is some pretty evocative art on the website as well. Here is an excerpt from the website regarding the tracks on the album:

It is the music of an unmade movie that is yet the reality right in front of our eyes. 'A Drop of Sand'...

It is the music of vast oil fields that the world's great powers strive for, of the silent yet whispering desert, and of humanity that is being taken for worthless. It is the tale of oil in massive tanks that is worthy enough to make us kill each other. Again, a music like the deserts, silent but not speechless.

The album "Bir Damla Kum (A Drop Of Sand)" opens with Run For Freedom that imagines children running free on vast untapped fields. Then, The Boss, second piece of the album takes the scene. This piece tells about massive oil tanks in all their ugliness, about oil companies that ruthlessly rule the world and their bosses. Third, we hear the piece that is the namepiece and raison d'etre of this album. Bir Damla Kum is about the silence of the desert and of being able to listen to your own self.

The fourth piece of the album, Introitus, describes the wars and other 'games' that evolve around oil. Then comes one of the most important parts of the album, Burning Oil Fields. As seen on the cover art, this piece puts down in notes the oil fields that Saddam's army burned down after retreating from Kuwait and the horrific scene that became a reality for weeks and weeks. The alienation that was felt by Kuwait's people after this groundbreaking event is told in the next piece, No More Home. The melody we meet when listening to Introitus is told with a different approach on the next piece, called Tension.

The snow that will never come can only be a dream for children in countries that feed themselves on this oil. Yet even the dreaming of it is peaceful. This peace embodies itself in Never Coming Snow, the closing piece of this album.

You can visit the website of Turkish musician Derya Yavuz by clicking here.