The Istanbul Oriental Ensemble is a Turkish band playing traditional Turkish music in an oriental gypsy style. The band's leader is Burhan Öçal; though he is a multi-indtrumentalist, in this band he generally plays the darbuka drum, to provide a rhythmic backdrop for improvisations by violin, clarinet, ud, and kanun. Öçal started the band (only one of his projects) in the mid-1990s in order to revive the old Turkish tradition of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gypsy music.

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