Rast Keman Taksim - Giriftzen Asım Bey - 19th Century Ottoman Music

Giriftzen Asım Bey's Rast Keman Taksim is an instrumental piece performed on the keman (violin) and composed in the Rast maqam, a musical mode used in Turkish classical music. Giriftzen Asım Bey was a Turkish musician, composer, and soldier, born on January 1, 1851, in Teselya and died on February 26, 1929, in Istanbul. He is known as the last performer of the girift, a forgotten type of ney, which is a traditional Turkish musical instrument. As well as being a musician, Asım Bey served in the firefighting unit of the Ottoman army as a soldier with the rank of captain. Asım Bey was trained in the art of playing ney at a Mevlevi tekke in Yenişehir, Greece. At the age of 18, he moved to Istanbul, where he joined the Ottoman firefighting unit and received training in playing the ney and girift.