February 10-16, 2005

music

What Child Is This?

MILLION GENRE BABIES: (L-R) Aaron Roussakis, Lynn Michalopoulos, Nero Catalano, Jameison Ledonio and Nick Michalopoulos.

Bebek is a band without a country.

by A.D. Amorosi

"I don't know how much of the music is about my ethnic heritage," says Nick Michalopoulos, keyboardist and co-songwriter of Northern Liberties quintet Bebek. His Armenian and Greek heritage informs the band's style, he says, but it's not exactly faithful.

"Our music blends electronics and urban beats," he says. "I've never been confident we would do well with folks like my grandmother, who grew up listening to classic Turkish sounds with ouds, clarinets and singers who chant rather than sing their words."

The Middle Eastern and East African harmonies and authentic Turkish and Greek rhythms on the band's eponymous CD, which drops this week, don't exactly conjure up "world music." With its dramatic plexus of electronics and jazzy chords applied to pliant hip-hop/dub rhythms, Bebek is otherworldly.

"We've had difficulty presenting this music to people in Philly stuck on indie rock," says Michalopoulos. "Promoters aren't sure what to do with a band that has more keyboards than guitars and sometimes subs the guitar completely for bouzouki."

Bebek is beautifully foreign, a mix of gnarly guitars, oud and bouzouki that drifts from Goth to Frisellian, all haunted by the unaffected clarity of vocalist Lynn Michalopoulos (the other half of the band's husband-wife/songwriting duo). What roots the band in reality beyond its alien sound is its elegant yet personal storytelling. The couple conveys personal history and cultural heritage with intimacy and emotion.

The lyrics on "Frozen" are three-way conversations between mother, son and daughter-in-law, informed by the memory of Michalopolous' mother (an Armenian raised in Istanbul), the guilt and sorrow he felt after her passing and the spiritual independence death brings.

The tender "Grace 6 5" and "Good News" are rich in mood and metaphor. "The bouzouki and clarinet lines are inspired by music I grew up listening to with my grandmother at home," Nick says. Images from his family's heritage, like the crescent moon, make unveiled appearances in his lyrics. "Lyrically, the crescent moon is an important symbol to Turks. My mother always believed that if you saw a true crescent moon in the sky that one should stop what you were doing and pray."

Lynn Michalopolous' mournful, hopeful vocals push the moon over the mountain, so to speak. "I like what happens when you combine the technique and clarity of classical training — a lot of vibrato — with the smoothness and soul of jazz," she says. Lynn, 30, sang in church and a cappella groups while in college in Chicago before meeting Nick, 29, a pianist in the Windy City's jazz scene. That inspiration is heard straight, no chaser, on "Today." Lynn's job in social work brought the two to Philly.

Rather than compose verse to chorus, bridge and back, Nick writes "horizontally," as he describes it, composing differing melody parts that intertwine repetitiously through each song. "Harmony is created not from one person singing and everyone else playing chords, but by two or three melodies interlocking," says Nick of the contagious, trippy feeling derived from the dueling guitar and violin lines on "She Knows."

"When people ask us what we call our music, I answer, "I don't know,' because I don't," laughs Nick. "That's why Bebek is a good name." (Bebek is the Turkish word for "baby.")

"The music and the band grew like a baby and developed into something on its own," he says. "It's a really personal music with lyrics that reflect the internal struggle in me and Lynn's life. It is the breathing of my spirit."

Bebek will play Fri., Feb. 11, 9 p.m., $7, as part of the Northern Liberties Winter Music Festival, with Keisha Hutchins, Devin Greenwood and The Fractals, The Fire, 412 W. Girard Ave., 267-671- 9298.