Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall (1959)

This is where it all began.

I was told by my parents that when I was a child, they had a really old CD player my father had managed get at a bargain price because the seller was a friend of his who shared his love for music.  Apparently, Chicago (once known as the Chicago Transit Authority) was one of the first things I heard, along with my mother's favourites of Sezen Aksu.

One of my earliest memories is of my father and his grey suit, back when I was 4 years or so, and he worked for the government.  I remember refusing to leave the house before I heard track 11 of Harry Belafonte's (Live) at Carnegie Hall (1959) album.

The track title? "Hava Nagila."

I knew it, of course, I had memorized it and was constantly trying to sing the faster parts.  Aramaic is sort of similar to Turkish, my mother tongue, with its somewhat heavy emphasis on consonents and the throat-purring vowels.  I didn't know what it meant in the slightest, but it was one of my favourite things in the whole world.  Others, I will get to in due time.

So then, as it so happens, one night, there was a party of sorts in our house.  We had guests that I didn't remember but pretended to and then constantly poked and prodded with personal questions.  I don't recall what the fuss was about, but I knew that it involved someone going to the US, by then just a vague idea for the 4.5 years-old me.  But I remember the champagne clearly.  There was a small window in our in-itself small kitchen, out of which they leaned to pop the bottle, and then proceeded to fill their glasses.  Being the curious-as-a-soon-to-be-dead-cat that I was, I kept badgering my parents, before resorting to use emotional blackmail on our guests.

Finally, my mother lost her patience.  She instructed my father to give me what I wanted so that she could be done with it.  I knocked the half-filled glass back... it was strange, but sweet.  I liked what it did with my body that didn't know what tolerance to alcohol was.  Of course, I wanted more, so I took to lurking and then downing the glasses of our guests, getting nice and drunk.

The whole thing came to a head for me when I started to sing Hava Nagila at the top of my lungs.  I don't know how many times I did before I passing out.

Now, as I am still not very much acquainted with calypso, I can't comment on whether or not this particular album was exceptional - I just know that Belafonte himself is.  If nothing else, the Carnegie Hall album has always been an on-again off-again obsession of mine.  When I finally managed to heed a bit of motherly advice and listen to the rest of it, I was mesmerized.  Firstly because I was still very young (we're now talkin' 10 or 11) and so 10 songs of average length until my favourite one was an eternity... and it never ocurred to me that the CD player had a "fast forward/skip" button.

But the way the Carnegie Hall was put together, the order of the songs, the presence of the audience and Belafonte's small anecdotes at the beginning of some tracks held a mystique for me. I didn't yet understand all the words, my English was still too weak for that, but I did work out some of them.  I had help: Belafonte's voice resonated with emotion, and he was so versatile with it that I was blown away.  From the darkness and urgency in Darlin' Cora to the loneliness and disappointment of Sylvie and Come Back Liza from the then-jolly Cotton Fields, The Marching Saints, Matilda and Man Smart (Woman Smarter) to the weary yet ritualistic Banana Boat Song the album was full of incredible moments, even more captivating for me.

So much so that years later, I learned what the rather jovial ballad titled John Henry, about a superhero-like mine worker (from what I understood) was really about.  I sat down, put it on, sang along and cried.  "I'll get it from the man in the mine oh, Lord, yes, I'll get it from the man in the mine..."

I think in many ways, Carnegie Hall was my introduction to many things, things that, years later, would define how I approach music and albums.  It was my first time experiencing an album, however it was, as an entity, not a silver disc that my dad could do technical stuff to in order to put on Hava Nagila.  An unconscious registering of structures, that some parts repeated.  Progression, fills, how instruments, vocals and lyrics put together.  Rhythm, melody.  To this day, it remains one of my favourite albums of all time.

There was one other, however, that I didn't get to lose myself in until many years later that likewise marked my childhood.  That was The Manhattan Transfer's The Offbeat of Avenues (1991)