Los Bitchos with Gaye Su Akyol

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast we’ve got two women from different parts of the planet who share a common heritage and creative outlook: Serra Petale and Gaye Su Akyol.

Petale is the guitarist for the multinational band Los Bitchos, which has been creating tough-to-pigeonhole instrumental music for the past seven years. The band’s membership and sound are both truly worldly: Petale is from Western Australia, and her bandmates are from Uruguay, Sweden, and the UK. As you’ll hear, they came together in London after Petale chased her musical dreams there, and they’ve made some incredibly fun music since, mixing sounds from Argentina, Turkey, and a sort of psychedelic surf-rock. Their first album, produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, came with the incredible title Let The Festivities Begin!, and they just followed it with another album, the fully delightful Talkie Talkie. Check out that album’s “La Bomba” right here.

The other half of today’s conversation joins us from her home base in Turkey. Gaye Su Akyol has been making music—not to mention painting—for the past decade, gaining a worldwide following for records that take the flavors of her country and expand them in a dozen directions. She’s been politically and artistically outspoken throughout her time in the spotlight, and you can tell that won’t be changing anytime soon. The title of her latest album translates to Anatolian Dragon, and here’s a song whose title I won’t butcher, but that translates roughly to, “I want to, but there’s no hurry.” Even if you don’t understand the words, it’s easy to catch its groove.

I mentioned that these two share a background: Gaye grew up in Turkey, as did Serra’s grandparents—as it turns out pretty close to each other. So they chat a bit about that, and occasionally drop in some Turkish words as well. They chat about how women need to go the extra mile to get their art into the world, and about manifesting your dreams rather than waiting around. If that sounds a little rah-rah, Gaye actually says, jokingly, that they sound like a Nike commercial at one point. I found it fun and inspiring, and I hope you do too. Enjoy.

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast, and thanks to Serra Petale and Gaye Su Akyol for chatting. If you liked what you heard, please follow Talkhouse on your favorite podcasting platform, and check out all the great stuff at Talkhouse.com. This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan, and the Talkhouse theme is composed and performed by the Range. See you next time!

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