“C’est tout de même le Pérou”
I happen to be in Lima Perú at the moment. Just when I was thinking that I may be done with large cities while traveling, I am having this opportunity to spend some time in the Peruvian capital. Currently, this amazing city and I are living our honeymoon period to the fullest. I haven’t seen anything like it before. According to my own references, I would attempt to reference it as a mixture between Buenos Aires, Ankara, and Istanbul. The maritime smell of the air constantly acts like a reminder of the Turkish city hosting the Bosphorus for me.
So far I have mostly visited the well off, touristy and bohemian areas such as Miraflores and Barranco. Thank to the cliffs, both places have visual access to the ocean on various different levels. There are about 40 meters between the ocean and the top of the cliffs. The city truly feels alive. It’s full of people doing all sorts of activities. All restaurants and coffee shops seem to have good business pretty much all the time. The weather feels amazing to me. I heard some locals complaining that it was too hot for them, but I personally love that I can be in shorts and tee all day all night.
Got started with my career as a street musician.
Since I am renting a room from a local family, I did not want to play my guitar all day in the apartment, and drive my hosts crazy and eventually get them prematurely allergic to Turkish Rock. I’ve chosen the beautiful parks in Miraflores as places to practice. This situation has been great for several reasons. It has been training me to play in different places in terms of acoustics, it is getting me used to play in front of people again since it has now been a while since my last official live performance. And lastly, the different sceneries tend to inspire me in different ways for new song creation.
I recently had the idea to use my new practice situation as a promotional tool for Black Sea Storm. I wrote on cardboard in big letters the name of my project, and ask people to follow me on Spotify and Instagram. I’ve also made some business cards by hand to give out to people who show interest in my project. Yesterday I played over three hours straight in front of strangers in Miraflores with a beautiful view of the Pacific ocean and the sunset. Most people do not seem to care that much about my music, but some of them do. It is also great to try out new parts and observe the body language of people as they are passing by in front of me. I came up this new arpeggio that I believe has an immediate appeal. And each time I’ve been playing it, I could sense that it draws some of the people’s attention. Playing out in public on the streets could serve me as a sort of a laboratory during the
Triple Win Playing the Streets.
Although it wasn’t my intention to generate income playing in parks, on my second night performing as a street musician, a woman passing by dropped a 1 US dollar on my guitar soft case along with some local coins to add some weight to the paper US bank note, so the dollar does not get blown away by the wind. I left the initial contribution there without touching it, and soon after more people started to throw in some more coins on my guitar sleeve. In less than a couple of hours, I was able to cover my daily rent where I am currently staying. It is already awesome to be able to practice in front of people, and if on top of that if people are supporting Black Sea Storm financially, this is probably one of the best things that could have happened to me on this trip. I’ve been praying for the people who have been supporting me, with money and their attention and I have been trying to send good karma towards them to the best of my abilities.
Besides generating money which is absolutely not my main focus at this point, I was able to meet very interesting people thank to playing out in the streets. Music is acting as conveyer to socialize with people and share our passions with one and other. I just hope that I will be discovering safe and welcoming places like Miraflores and Barranco to pursue this activity while traveling. This situation allows me to promote Black Sea Sea Storm, to get live-ready to start playing more legit shows and generate little bit income to work towards my goal of making this adventure of traveling the world while creating music to be fully sustainable on its own.
Getting Live-Ready
As I have already mentioned in the above paragraph, my efforts of playing on the streets intensely are allowing me to get ready to be able to perform shows live with Black Sea Storm. I have learned and adapted six of my own songs already, so I can perform them just with my acoustic guitar and my voice. As soon as I feel stage ready, I want to start playing open-mic nights, coffee shops, and who knows; start opening up for more established artists at legit concerts. My idea is to transform my traveling the world adventure into a Black Sea Storm potentially
Can do the whole process, all by myself
I feel extremely happy and proud to be able to write, record, distribute, and now play my songs live, all on my own. This is the first time in my life when I can enjoy the freedom of being fully auto-sufficient as a musician. I can travel and pursue a musical career at the same time. This feels at the moment to be a good alternative to touring with a band. It took me about 29 years to figure this one out, but now that I am able to bring it a bit more together, I feel like this is the most precious thing I own in my life at this very moment.