In the noisy bustle of London’s West End, I have been looking for sanctuaries of quietness and contemplation. I found them in the back alleys and doorways of Chinatown.
At night, when the countless restaurants compete for tourists and theatregoers, throngs of visitors collide with Chinatown’s tight-knit ethnic community. By the time the restaurants open, some of the kitchen staff have already been working since early morning. Many of them are recent immigrants who speak little more than a few words of English. Some will have clocked more than 60 hours when the week is over.
Portraits of Larry Love (aka Rob Spragg) and The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love (aka Jake Black).
Founded in Brixton 1995, Alabama 3 achieved success when the producers of hit TV series The Sopranos chose the track "Woke Up This Morning" for the show's opening credits.
Turkish Cymbals
Bosphorus Cymbals is one of the few remaining companies in the world that still manufacture cymbals in pretty much the same way they have been made in Turkey for centuries. Today’s big cymbal makers such as Zildjian, Paiste or Sabian churn out millions of cymbals a year and most of them are, at least partly, computer-designed and machine made.
Not so here, where 15 trained cymbal makers create just 200 cymbals per week and each one of them is completely handcrafted. Once the copper-tin metal mixture has been cast into blanks, these are rolled through machines that vaguely resemble printing presses, the metal sheets are hand-hammered into shape. Finally some cymbals are lathed to give them their final thickness (others remain un-lathed for a drier sound and rougher look).
It’s hard to believe that these high-quality instrument are made in a shack on the outskirts of Istanbul that resembles a medival blacksmith’s workshop. What’s even more astonishing is the fact that not one of the people working here is a musician, let alone a drummer.
