Rock Legend Steve Vai Says Turkish Audience 'just Built With Life'

ISTANBUL, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Apr, 2023 ) :Steve Vai, one of the world's most famous guitarists, praised his Turkish audience ahead of his concerts next week in Ankara and Istanbul as part of his European tour.

"There was a period of time back when I was recording Alive in an Ultra World where I was studying the traditional music of various cultures, and Turkey was one of them," Vai told Anadolu.

"What a rich musical culture," he added, recalling "traditional music from the culture" that he listened to quite a lot.

The award-winning guitarist, who has released 11 studio albums in his career of more than 30 years, has recorded in many different styles such as instrumental rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and progressive rock.

Vai, a former Whitesnake, Alcatrazz and David Lee Roth guitarist, has featured several times in the best guitarist lists prepared by music magazines and websites.

Vai's first concert will take place in the Turkish capital Ankara on April 18 and a day after he will be rocking in Istanbul.

"I remember the Turkish kind of traditional mentality, it was beautiful because it involved a way of playing a stringed instrument that wasn't natural," he said, referring to the traditional Turkish stringed musical instruments saz and ud.

"If you're playing a saz or an ud, it was a whole different mind structure. And also, just the way that they change keys is very untraditional to Western music. So I listened to that," he said.

"When I was in Turkey once many years ago, I bought an ud and a saz and I brought them out on stage and played them and recorded them," he added. "They're in my studio. I look at them every day." Vai said he always loved to travel and to see different cultures. "When you're young and you're going to school, and you're learning about other places in the world, you are not really learning the culture, you learn, sometimes political history, but you don't really know what it's like until you go." Describing T�rkiye as an "exotic" location to an American, he said: "When I go to a place like Turkey, I go for the people and the culture and the things that I love about it. And it always turns out great."Recalling his earlier concerts in T�rkiye, the guitar virtuoso said: "The Turkish audience also is just built with life. You can hear it on my Alive and an Ultra World record.""When I recorded a song in Turkey and we're just going mad, just really moving with the music and that's fantastic, very passionate people," he added.