LomoAmigo: Geeva Flava Shoots With the La Sardina

Young and upcoming Turkish Jazz band Geneva Flava took the La Sardina for a fun spin. From concerts to everyday moments, they captured their daily life. We had a nice chat with them about music and life.

Hi, could you introduce Geeva Flava to the Lomography Community?

Of course. The name ‘Geeva’ comes from the Hindu language and it simply means ‘living thing’ and ‘Flava’ is the slang version of the English word ‘flavour’. As ‘living organisms’ we have come together 4 years ago. In those times Omer, Aybars, Can, and Berkin were working on some compositions, mainly in the genre of funk/ fusion. As time goes by, this genre evolved to a more broad and different one. With this change, Ozgun in sax, Yılmazcan in trumpet, Kerem Duru on drums and percussion and Naz Ugurlu in vocals were welcomed to the band as new members. After the rush of many gigs played in university festivals, bars around Beyoglu district and vice versa, we have decided to release an album. The recording process was in renowned Babajım Studios. The album was then released in August 2017 and is available on Spotify / ITunes. After a fun album process, we have attended IKSV Young Jazz Competition and were one of the bands that were given the chance to play in Istanbul Jazz Festival. In 8th of July, we will also play in Salon IKSV.

Could you talk about your music for the ones who don’t know Geeva Flava?

We don’t like to define our music so strictly; we think all of our members perceive music differently thus we get interesting results when we try to merge our ideas.

We know that Can is newly interested in photography. What is the situation with the rest of the band?

Omer is interested in optical illusions for a long time, he couldn’t progress to photography yet ☺

Can – how did you get interested in photography?

I’m a rookie in photography. I’ve found an old Olympus camera in a wardrobe in my flat and decided to jump in right away. I’m still in the learning process and hope to see nice moments to capture.

You have used the La Sardina for quite some time, how was the experience?

As we’ve found out that La Sardina was named after ‘Sardine’, we realized that the design is influenced by a sardine box. As for its usability, it is easy to use for an analog camera and though we were taking photos unconsciously, the results were really good.

Did you have any interesting memories while using La Sardina?

Özgün Tuncer smiled for the first time ☺

How would you define La Sardina in three words?

Sardines, the ocean, and the sun.

What is your favorite photo that you shot with the La Sardina?

We love all the photos where we are together as a band ☺

You’ve had a couple of performances during May. Besides, you’ve had a gig in Project’03 event in Bilgi University and taken a couple of pictures with La Sardina. How do you balance school and music?

Balancing school and music life is easy for us because we love creating art together. Also, we don’t think that school and music are different subjects because what we learn in school feeds and contributes to our music. Music is always with us in our daily lives. When we have time to spare, debating on our musical ideas and creating art makes a regular school day interesting.

Do you have new projects in mind?

Yes. We are currently working on a Youtube project called ‘Surmekan’, which is a video clip project that consists of different videos of us playing in different locations, live. In this process, we have two videos that were filmed in Ortakoy and Silivri.

Where would you want to be right now?

As we are getting old as a band, we really could use a massage ☺

Among the figures of popular culture, whose picture would you want to take and why?

We would want Miles Davis as our model, because we bump into him every time we are practicing in the studio. Him staring at us feels like he is critiquing our music ☺

Do you have any advice for La Sardina?

La Sardina is a nice camera for starters. Pros will also enjoy the experience. Our only advice: get a La Sardina camera and take pictures without any fear!

We thank you as Lomography Turkey for the time with us!

We thank you too for your kindness and for being the source of the nice pictures we took.

You can follow Geeva Flava on their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, listen to their songs on their Spotify account. Also, if you would like to listen to them live, you can get tickets to İKSV "Caz Matine" on Biletix, the concert is on the 8th of July!

written by pinar434 on 2017-07-04 #la-sardina