Psychedelia Around the World

Most of us have already heard something about psychedelic rock, or at least know some bands which experienced with psychedelic music, the Doors, the Beatles in the mid sixties, or Pink floyd, but did you know that the psychedelia scene was very much present in all corners of the world? Radio Q-music reporter Amir has prepared some examples from different countries for us.

From the mid sixties till well over the end of the decade, psychedelia was everywhere, the hippie culture was at its peak, colorful Volkswagen Type 2s filled with stoned, young individuals were at every corner. This huge cultural wave didn’t just stop at the Western countries and crossed their boarders eventually. Some got it early, some got it later, and some got it basically when the world had already moved on to the next cool thing, but nonetheless, everybody got a taste of a small acid drop under their tongue, or at least received a little bit of that feeling when they once heard a few seconds of a strange song from the radio. 

Us, music enjoyers in the second quarter of the twenty first century, have all heard Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Light my Fire and White Rabbit, over half a century after they were made, but wouldn’t it be really cool to liste n to some examples of the similar concept with different flavours?

Our first stop would be Iran. In the early seventies, Iranian guitarist and singer Kourosh Yaghmaei experimented with blending Western psychedelic rock with Persian folklore music and released his debut album, “Gol-e Yakh” or Ice Flower in 1973. It became an overnight sensation, and eventually one of the best selling albums in Persian music history. The title track, Gol-e Yakh, is now considered to be one of the most memorable and genre-defining Persian songs of all time.  

And Iran wasn’t the only place this was happening. Just a little further west, Turkey was developing a psychedelic sound of its own. By the late sixties and early seventies, bands like Led Zeppelin and Yes became very popular, specially among young students in Istanbul. They started to form their own bands, covering Western rock songs with their own twist, and like this, the Anatolian rock scene was born. One of those students was Erkin Koray. His second album, Elektronik Türküler, is perhaps the finest example of Anatolian rock, a brilliant fusion of Turkish folklore and distorted guitar.

Across the Atlantic, Brazil was also having its own psychedelic revolution. In the late sixties, the Tropicalia cultural movement brought together Brazilian popular and avant-gard art. The musical faction of the movement amalgamated Brazilian rhythms with psychedelic and experimental sounds. One of the most prominent figures of this movement was the Sau Paulo-based band, Os Matanes. Their 1968 self-titled debut album became one of the defining records of Brazilian psychedelia.

So, as you can see, music truly has no boundaries and musical movements travel across the world. Wherever they go, they absorb some characteristics of their new home. 

Image source: editorial