Jozi Levi, who’s musical interest started -when he could even hardly speak- by humming along with the 45-rpm singles that his father used to bring back from Italy, was born when Istanbul used to be the “real” Istanbul.
Along with being a true music lover, he also knew and loved to play in the streets in his childhood. But his ‘real’ meeting with music was when he started taking piano lessons at the age of 7. He was gifted; he could have kept on with classical music. However, he said goodbye to classical music and private piano lessons. He chose pop/rock genres and started to play keyboards and organ. During the same period, his interest in music blossomed into passion and it begun to grow up towards percussion instruments being inspired especially by the music of Carlos Santana. And then, this passionate child debuted in his high school, “English High School” with his band “Mini Monsters”.
In his early years, he played with his good friends like Hakan Behlil, Batu Mutlugil, Bülent “Canavar” Atlıoğlu, Roni Adut, Deniz Dündar, Harun Kolçak, Hamdi Demirel, Süleyman Ulagay, Rudolf ve Manfred Bergemann, Özkan Uğur, Galip Kayıhan on every possible occasion. When ‘music’ is your love, you cannot stick to one genre only. Jozi Levi was interested in Jazz, Brazilian and Latin music in his teenage years. He played “Fender Rhodes” electric piano for five years during his higher education in the UK and so did in his first band in Turkey “Jazz Junior”. He started collecting percussion instruments and tried to learn them on his own. Although he was an amateur musician, during the following years, he managed to perform in some music events in Istanbul, thanks to his extraversion. He met important musicians like the bassist Carlos Benavent, and the saxophonist Jorge Pardo of Paco de Lucia’s band and had the chance to play with them, on one or two occasions.
