The Istanbulator

Ph.inisheD.

2011-08-17T18:50:00.008+03:00

Well, it only took nine years* (and let's ignore the monetary cost, for the moment), but I finally did get through the whole system - wrote the dissertation (The Theory and Praxis of Makam in Classical Turkish Music 1910-2010**), defended it, filed. That makes me "Dr. Eric," I reckon. Now we'll see if there is any work available in the field of ethnomusicology - whee!

As with my last post, I do not really intend to post anything here ever again, but since I don't know how to make the thing go away, and in any case it serves as an interesting archive of the research period, well, here it remains. You can better keep up with me at "Eric Ederer dot com," if that is of interest - thanks for stopping by!

(*The 9 years included a prerequisite master's degree in the same subject - it was slow, but not that slow.)

(**Eventually the dissertation will be available at the UCSB Music Library, and through ProQuest/UMI; for now you can see the abstract here, anyway.)

Long Road in a Short Time

2009-12-03T15:49:00.003+02:00

Well, hello again! Realizing that I'm not really keeping up with this blogging business, I thought I'd just mention where I am in the dissertation-writing process and note that I expect entries here to continue to be scarce, at least for the time being.

As you know, I'm writing a dissertation on the subject of taksim ('improvisaton') in classical Turkish music. Or more precisely, I'm comparing makam ('modal') theory of the 20th century with taksim (as the praxis of makam theory) as performed between 1910 and 2010, both in early 20th c. recordings and from videos I took of performers during my recent 42 week research trip to Istanbul. My hypothesis is that - whatever the theorists have been saying - there's an organic, performance-oriented makam theory manifest in the way taksim-s are played and understood by experienced performers; if so, my job is to delineate at least some of its principles.

The work is going quickly. I moved here to Evanston, Illinois about a month ago and I'm just heading into Chapter IV. It's broadly structured to have 3 sections: historical, ethnographic, and musicological, and the new chapter will begin the ethnography. My hope is that the winter... the dread Chicago winter - Leaf-Scourge, Freezer of Great Lakes, Bringer of Excess Weight to Squirrel and Man - will help me concentrate even more, get this thing moving toward Those Who are Interested.

Meanwhile, I'm playing music irregularly (mostly that lâvta, finally), some with the Bulbul Ensemble, and some with Lamajamal, and hoping to get something going with music I've constructed myself. And there are interesting talks on the Northwestern University campus, especially at the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, which houses the Keyman Family Program in Modern Turkish Studies, and who are making me an 'affiliate,' which sounds right friendly.

As always, I'm grateful that you came by to check up on me, and I hope you're doing well. I have no idea when next I'll write here, but you can always drop me an e-mail to say hi and tell me what you're up to.

(Thanks to Bahadir Turan for sharing the above image via this website about Neyzen Sencer Derya.

“Blogging in the Field”: a Meta-Post

2009-10-15T21:33:00.008+03:00

Hello again, and welcome to another cranium-vibrating blog session from “The Istanbulator.” In this installment we have an essay about keeping a blog while doing ethnographic fieldwork, so let’s dig in.

Veni, vidi, bloggy.

Firstly I should speak to the matter of motivation for keeping such a blog. I would be remiss to omit that a part of it amounts to personal vanity, which I find in moderation to serve as a useful medium for self-reflection. On a blog of one’s own one can put forward an idealized personal representation (whatever that may mean for each person) that in (inevitable) moments of doubt in the midst of fieldwork frustrations can remind the blogger that the research endeavor is not a total write-off. Although it is hoped that feedback from informants, neighbors, et al., in the field be mostly encouraging, it’s also the case that a researcher is generally “on his/her own” out there; posting items about the little victories and problems-solved that appear to confirm success and general life stability can be a booster for the self-esteem that’s necessary to keep it together and drive the project forward, and – just like in real life – even a lack of response may be taken as tacit approval (“maybe no-one’s throwing rocks at me because I’m doing alright!”). In any case, readers’ comments can be “moderated” (made public or kept hidden... see below) to suit the needs of the blogger. [1]

If for no other reason than the above, it is worth a reminder to read blogs as critically as you read anything else. A blog is like an ideology; what it refuses to say is as interesting and important as what it insists on saying. [2]

Know your audience?

I didn’t put a “visitor counter” on my blog so I have no idea how many people were following my little adventures, much less who they actually were. I got very few responses overall - just enough to make me think it wasn’t a totally solipsist endeavor – but that doesn’t bother me; I enjoy other people’s cultural produce all the time without commenting on it. Still, there is the potential for bizarre and anonymous comments; I wonder who it is who thought this (bottom of page) is the appropriate response to the news “my mother has a brain tumor” (and what shall I say about my strangely biblical fire-meets-fire response?). And what about my writing inspired this (anonymous, unpublished) "comment," I wonder?

It seems likely that most of my readers have been people who already know me, at least half of them not ethnomusicologists; especially since feedback may be sparse, deciding how much jargon and technical information to put up there is a factor in the writing. For the most part I just threw it all in and slightly over-explained everything, which seems to have worked fine.

It’s safe to assume, though, that some of the blog’s visitors may be informants or potential informants. This can make blog content great advertising for the project, especially if you can link to informants’ web-presences, or better, have something (like my videos of taksim performances ) that can be demonstrated rather than just mentioned on the blog. But be sure when you’re gathering/making such a thing whether or not the informant would want or allow you to put it up there; I had some who were very eager to share their taksim-s with the world via Internet (and gave them copies of the clips for their own use, which later appeared on Facebook, You Tube, etc.) and others who requested specifically that I not put them on the ‘Net — ask! [3]

There’s also the issue of keeping your bright ideas to yourself. On the one hand “publishing” something on a blog is a kind of claim to copyright; it provides date-stamped evidence of your first engagement with what you may take to be an original idea. On the other hand, it’s possible that someone else may scoop your idea and get it published in a more professionally noteworthy medium before you do, and all you’ve got is a claim and an old blog post no-one will remember (much less cite). [4]

Additionally, if colleagues are actually reading the blog, it can be a medium for discussing and perhaps even solving real issues that come up in the application of our art, although the only time I actually tried this (third paragraph) I got no response at all. Still, the potential is there.

Better than spam

Overall, I think keeping this “field blog” has been a good experience; less annoying to friends than mass e-mails, a fine distraction when one is needed, pretty good for keeping up morale (both for yourself and for worried relatives back home), potentially a forum for working out practical problems with one’s colleagues, and on balance more helpful than harmful to the research itself. I’m not exactly sure what to do with it now that I’m no longer “in the field,” but it seems as though these same qualities may be useful during the process of writing a dissertation, so I suppose I’ll just keep on posting.

One more note before I shuffle along, though – blogging is forever: for no particularly good reason, anything that goes up on the Internet is likely to be cached or archived somewhere else on the ‘Net and remain available for many years — possibly without end — even after you think you've taken it down; you really are publishing, here. Caveat blogator.

‘Til next time then… thanks for stopping by.

[Ever hear the saying, "people who like sausage should avoid seeing how it's made"? The footnotes in this post are for the sausage-makers in the UCSB Ethnomusicology Forum - don't worry, you're not missing much. These are not the 'droids you're looking for.]

A Month By Any Other Name

2009-10-01T11:28:00.003+03:00

Hello, fans. It’s a month since I last posted anything here; a strange and strained month that seems to promise little more than another like it to follow, and that’s how that goes, though I’m looking forward to life in the Greater Chicago Area. I’m still in Santa Barbara, now, awaiting the official memorial for my mother, which we’ve set for Saturday, October 10th at Shoreline Park, near the wooden steps, 2 PM (come by, if you feel like it – very informal). Soon after I’ll pack up and drive to Evanston, Illinois, settle in for my first real winter, and get to assembling this dissertation.

As you may have heard, the University of California (along with the state budget) is broke, and they seem to think that they can make up some of the loss by increasing our fees and tuition by 40% (8% already, and another 32% coming up)(not to mention cutting professors’ pay 8-15%). Since I’ll be away I’m having to put more energy than I’d like into playing dueling-loopholes with the bureaucracy to keep my costs down, which also involves questions about my insurance and repayment of student loans. This is the least interesting part of the Graduate Student Game.

But the game’s not all bad. I’m getting a lot done on the writing already, and I think it’ll be a good dissertation. Some people dread the writing part, but I love it – I’m already up to nearly 90 pages (including front matter, two chapters, 5 appendices, and an ever-expanding bibliography). And I’ve enjoyed getting back to UCSB Middle East Ensemble rehearsals, seeing all the folk again, playing ud and cümbüş (though there’s no Turkish music this quarter, at least not yet).

And today at school we had our first Ethnomusicology Forum of the quarter; this is a regular weekly meeting of all the graduate students and professors to keep in contact, share research, ideas, complaints, host guest artists and speakers, etc. Today I met and welcomed the students who’ve joined while I was away, heard about research people did over the summer (I’ll present my Istanbul tale next Wednesday), and – I’ve been leading up to this – learned that the week after that there’s a subject for discussion in the Forum, “Blogging in the Field” – about researchers who blog during and about their research excursions (I guess this is a ‘thing’ – see here). Since I’ll be either on the road or in Evanston that day I thought I might post something here (that is, above, in the next post) about it… a sort of meta-post; blogging about the blogging.

I wonder if that’s such a good idea (not least because I have no idea who actually reads this), but marginally bad ideas seem to be a part of blogging, anyway, so we’ll see what comes up.

OK – thanks for stopping by!

Returnings

2009-08-28T03:09:00.005+03:00

Well, I got home last night around midnight Santa Barbara time, having just by the skin of my teeth finished getting everything closed out and paid off and shipped away, all my goodbyes said, et cetera. The flight was long, of course, and I was glad to have been mysteriously bumped up to business class for the longest stretch of it, Frankfurt to San Francisco - better food and plenty of room for those who can sleep on such flights.

Sadly, I made it home just in time to see my mom off to the Next Thing. She had been declining steadily for the last few months and was really just waiting to see me again before letting herself pass away, which she did about 4 PM today. We got to talk a bit, and I played ud for her, which she loved, said she wished she could get it together to sing, but it would take too much energy. But she wasn't afraid; she had a fine life, did most of what she'd wanted to do (perhaps there's a simulacrum of Paris she can visit where she is, now), left a lot of love in her wake, and died surrounded by people who loved and appreciated her, so it's all turned out as well as it could have under the circumstances.

In response to my last post, my friend Gregory sent me the following poem, an old favorite and one I think is appropriate for this moment, for my mom and for me, and maybe for you too... Konstantin Kavafis' Ithaca. Enjoy - I hope to write again soon.

As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you' ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

Ventilation

2009-08-19T13:00:00.003+03:00

Well, hello yet again... I'm writing now only to report some of the difficulties I'm having shutting my little operation down, here. That is, to whine a bit... or let's be dignified and call it "venting."

As of today I have but a week left in İstanbul, leaving for California as I do on Wednesday the 26th of August. Last Wednesday the graphics card in my computer burned out (and I'm assured it would take only 3 weeks to repair) so I have been since then without access to any of the mountains of data, video, audio recordings, budgeting information, to-do lists, 'phone numbers and addresses etc. with which I could otherwise have continued the last of my actual research, not to mention the loss of internet access, which puts me here in a greasy internet café where - may the gods of ethnomusicology forgive me - the music is thoroughly awful, and to be honest, not actually improved by playing it at high volume.

But those losses turn out to be just as well since it seems as though I will need to spend more time than I'd anticipated closing out all my accounts and getting everything - books, several instruments, winter clothes, etc. - shipped "home," which in this case means a currently undisclosed location in Evanston, Illinois, where I myself won't arrive until some time in October. Not even the trans-Atlantic cargo ships are that slow, but I think I've got this part of it mostly worked out.

Am I wrong in my recollection that in the US one may call - by ordinary telephone! - one's utility companies to tell them that one is moving, arranging right there to have the service canceled upon a certain day in the future, the balance to be removed from a previously paid deposit, and the remainder to be forwarded to a new address? Oh, these clever Americans!

Here one must travel across town - in as many directions as there are utilities companies, all far away but in my case numbering only four - to stand for an hour in what might be mistaken for a line in order to get the first stamp to get permission to wait for the form that allows one to wait for the signature for the... like some rodeo clown in the Kafka Memorial Hoedown, all ending, for some reason no-one will explain, in additional fees obliterating the deposit left long ago and then some, and only then to get the bad news that, no, one can only cancel service the very day you will no longer need it, come back then to start the process over.

The ugly options, then, are either to spend my last day - if it could even all be done in a day - repeating this farce, or to cancel them all early and spend my last few days without water or electricity, and board the 'plane stinking a bit, perhaps having left some unwanted but inevitable gifts in the toilet as a tribute to the system.

Yes, I'll try to maintain my composure - thanks for your reminder - but a part of me rather does prefer the idea of simply leaving without a word to these tireless corporate servants (my debts having already been paid, and they with my deposits still), so that only a future generation of bureaucratic accountants will someday find my unfinished paperwork in a dusty archive, roll it carefully into the shape of a flute, insert it into a suitable orifice and wanly whistle my name in regret of our unconsummated relationship.

Thank you for your patience - if you will excuse me, I must leave to find a few cardboard boxes, and perhaps some adult diapers.

Trip

2009-08-10T10:07:00.016+03:00

Hello again! Back in İstanbul after around two weeks of vacation - click on the map above to see a larger version of our route.

Part of me wants to describe the whole thing, but maybe that's a bit much for a blog as humble as this - I certainly hesitate to try putting up the 400 some photos we (mostly Andrea) took - but here are the basics:

Firstly the Black Sea Coast - while those masses of tourists who chose the Mediterranean edges of Turkey for their vacation were sweltering in 50C/122F temperatures, we spent the first week in the verdant, forest-covered northeast, where it was not only much cooler but rained quite a bit. Three days in Ayder (near-ish the Georgian border) and the Kaçkar Mountain air were refreshing, even if we were cold and wet much of the time, especially the day we climbed up to 3,000 meters (9,900 feet) to a crater lake (though now I'm not sure which one). Below is a picture of what it looked like to us, and here is a link to what it supposedly looks like in the sunshine.

Sunshine-free after a 3-hour hike straight up, in sandals - whee!

After that we went back to the coast, through Rize (where the tea is so fresh it squeals) to Trabzon, the perfect setting for a certain kind of early-'60s cold war spy film with it's macho guys in tiny cars and Russian store signs, where we visited with friend and fellow ethnomusicology grad student Nico E. and later climbed up to the Sümela Monastery in all its defunct and grafitti-ed splendor.

Sümela - keeping monks high for hundreds of years.

Onward west the high points were Amasya and Safranbolu with their restored Ottoman houses and Silk Road kervansarays, cobblestone streets, open markets, et cetera - really wonderful places I recommend visiting.

Amasya, former capitol of the Pontic Kingdom, home of Strabo,
and training ground for many of the Ottoman Empire's finest Sultans.
This was our hotel - note the castle at the top of the mountain!

Safranbolu. Saffron tea, saffron candy, saffron perfume
- is that what makes these people so nice and mellow? Even
the many metalsmiths - the last surviving medieval trade guild -
were pleasant and inviting conversationalists.

Except for the first jump to Trabzon (by 'plane) and the final trip home from Mudanya to İ-town (by hydrofoil ferry), all of our moving around was accomplished by way of long bus rides - 5, 6, 9 hours at a stretch - but there are many competing companies and buses are generally nicer than in the US. Only a couple times were there overcrowding or livestock issues to hamper the mood, and the countryside is generally nice, in a 'developing world' sort of way. And there were a couple of places we might just as well have stayed on the bus. I'll just say that Ankara has a very nice "Anatolian Civilizations Museum" (and had Atatürk's tomb complex been open that day, I'm sure we would have appreciated that, too), and that Amasra, despite it's obsession with local died-pretty rocker boy Barış Akarsu, its mouldy-smelling pension rooms, its dishonest fish salesmen and tawdry carnival rides - yes, despite bad public rock concerts 'til late in the evening, its concrete skeleton awash in adolescent grafitti - its museum was also alright.

Lastly before coming home we spent three days in Bursa, a lovely place, to me Turkey's "second city." With its castle on the hill, Silk Han, yet more restored Ottoman houses, friendly policemen, Karagöz-Hacivat (shadow puppet theater) Museum (in front of the tomb of the man credited with bringing the art from Egypt and developing its eponymous characters), tombs of Osman (the founder of the Ottoman Empire) and his son Orhon, Mount Ulu in the background, not to mention the candied chestnuts... whew! Nice place... yes; go there!

Ever felt that you needed to know absolutely everything about silk?
Try the Bursa City Museum!

Anyway... now we're back in Üsküdar, enjoying the last few days before Andrea flies home. I'm still here until the 27th of August, then back to Santa Barbara, and later Chicago, to start the process of analyzing my data and writing up this dissertation.

Happy above the timberline in the Kaçkar Mountains.
Smelled like sandalwood!

You must be tired by now, but remind me to tell you here about the new ud Mustafa has just finished for me, a special experiment that turned out pretty well. Meanwhile, be well yourselves and enjoy the summer.

[New Ud Update: rather than fight the business-laziness continuum, I'm just going to link here to a different web page with news about the new ud - enjoy!]

Off Northward

2009-07-20T10:13:00.005+03:00

Howdy! Well this is just quickie to say that Andrea and I are heading up to the Black Sea coast (without ornery computers) for a couple of weeks - will post photos and stories when we get back, around Aug. 4.

Cümbüş enthusiasts (and aren't we all that?) will enjoy this news about an antique one I recently acquired (pictured above).

OK - enjoy! Back soon.

It’s all a blur (which worked for Monet).

2009-07-01T10:04:00.012+03:00

Three weeks is it, since my last post? Well, my apologies, friends; I’ve been remiss. But busily remiss, and that may redeem. In the first of those weeks I got a modest amount of new recording and interviewing done, to bring my tally up to:

Instruments	Musicians	Taksims	They Analyze	I'll Analyze
Ud	4	16	13	3
Kanun	5	13	6	7
Tanbur	5	21	13	8
Kemençe	5	8	1	7
Ney	4	13	8	5
Y. Tanbur	4	11	10	1
Violin	3	4	1	3
Clarinet	1	1	0	1
Voice	1	1	0	1
Totals	30*	88	52	36

(*Two persons performed on two different instruments each, so there are 30 performers even though this adds up to 32.)

So, thanks to the very talented and thoughtful Ahmet T. on ney and Anyes A. on kanun for bumping me up there a bit, and for giving much to think about from our interviews. Although I am pretty sure I'll be making a few more recordings, I finally feel that I am approaching done-ness on the data gathering front.

The more recent two weeks have been exciting in two respects. One is that my mom had a successful brain surgery and thereby has less cancer in her body than she did before, which I think we might all celebrate, and the physical therapists are hopeful about her recovering fine motor control of her left arm and hand, so thanks doctors, nurses, anaesthesiologists, and physical therapists in Santa Barbara and around the world for doing all your good work! And big kisses to mom, of course, to aid in her recovery. Mwah!

The other font of excitement is the arrival of many friends from abroad, first and foremost my girlfriend (if we may use that word at our age), Dr. Andrea Fishman, lately of Evanston, Illinois.

Here we are again, in case you'd forgotten what we look like. Nice to be together again after lo, these 9 months apart. Haven't yet had too much alone time as yet - which we plan to remedy by way of a trip up the Black Sea coast, soon - because we've been joyously hosting/tour-guiding a pretty constant flow of out-of-town guests - Rami and Richard and Susan and Marina and David and Paddy, and I hear Michael's in town but haven't seen him yet and all the food makes us fat and the walking in this heat (up to 41 C/106 F) makes us thin and the blur of music (listening, mostly, but did arrange and play a gig with Andrea and Rami and Bob B. at Molly's Café last week) and ud makers (from which a great buying of ud-s has ensued) and 3,000 + years of historical doo-dahs and boat tours and more food... whew! Yeah - mighty nice times, but also a wee bit tiring. Thanks, Rami, for bringing the scotch.

So that's what condition our condition is in. I hear California is declaring bankruptcy and discreetly asking if Obama wants to buy the joint - I'm picturing Schwartzenegger in tie-dye holding up a finger in front of the legislature saying "I need a miracle." Hmm. (And they don't really want me to pay back those student loans, do they?)

Anyway, about seven more weeks here before I return, possibly to a brand-new Wall Mart University of Pepsifornia, Santa Budweiser campus. Let's wish each other luck - bye bye and buy bonds. And while we're at it, Happy Birthday United States of America! They say the first 233 years are the hardest - hang in there!

Men at Work

2009-06-07T23:02:00.010+03:00

Architect/tanburi Firuz Akın Han and I enjoying a Sunday afternoon,
(a.k.a. "research." Photo by udi Mehmet Emin Bitmez).

As our man Heraclitus said, "Πάντα ῥεῖ" - Panta rei - Everything flows (or "is in a state of flux"). Seems true enough from here. It's been almost two weeks since my last confession... er... blog entry... and rather than stress out about my work as I "should" have done, I pretty much just relaxed instead and let whatever might happen happen. Such are the connections and luck I've made here that this has nonetheless resulted in another nine taksim recordings. Here's the updated tally:

Instruments	Musicians	Taksims	They Analyze	I'll Analyze
Ud	4	16	13	3
Kanun	4	10	3	7
Tanbur	5	21	13	8
Kemençe	5	8	1	7
Ney	4	10	5	5
Y. Tanbur	4	11	10	1
Violin	3	4	1	3
Clarinet	1	1	0	1
Voice	1	1	0	1
Totals	29*	82	46	36

(*Two persons performed on two different instruments each, so there are 29 performers even though this adds up to 31.)

Three other performers also made good on their promises to analyze previously recorded taksim-s, so in all it's been both productive and satisfyingly lazy. (Why do I suspect that this is not what my next job will be like?) Even got some playing in; mostly (Turkish) classical pieces, a couple of my own, and plenty of taksim-s at Molly's Café near the Galata Tower with lâvtacı Nico E. and kemancı Nico R. - not a bad job of it either, if I may say so, and especially since the currency of recompense was the iced mocha. I also dropped by my friend Ali Cümbüş' shop and picked up a yaylı tanbur, which I've been meaning to do since I got here - though it's probably too late to take lessons, at this point. (If I get good enough on it to do a passable taksim before this blog runs out I'll put a video of it up here.)

Meanwhile, Mom (who for all I know was Heraclitus himself in another lifetime) is going merrily with the flow as well, and may her luck be as good as mine has been!

And that, friends, is where it's at... thanks again for stopping by!

(The same scene from a different angle.)

"Interesting Times"

2009-05-26T20:50:00.025+03:00

Portrait of the artist as a middle-aged Mevlevi lutenist.

Well, hello again. Let me first send out and solicit some good healing vibes for my mother, Pat Ederer, who appeared to have suffered a minor stroke this week, though tests seem to indicate the presence of two very small brain tumors as the cause. She's apparently in fairly good condition (and definitely in a positive mind-set); the stroke-like aspect was small, happened in the right hemisphere, which generally portends physical, rather than cognitive, damage - her left arm and hand have lost some fine motor abilities, but we hope it's temporary - and most importantly, it hasn't been followed by a larger "stroke." She's at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara right now, "under observation," getting more MRI scans, etc., hopefully to return home very soon and gear up for treatment. I'm glad that my brother Greg is with my folks now, so thanks go out to him (though it has caused him to cancel his visit here, planned for June 3-13), and to my dad who's holding up his end, as well. Santa Barbara is blessed with fine doctors, and mom has good insurance and a strong positive attitude, and at this point the prognosis is very good. All my love, mom! Now, given that she doesn't want me to fly home early...

...hereabouts, the crunch-time cometh - many İstanbulite musicians will be leaving town in the next three weeks for the end of summer (and I'm scheduled to leave August 27th) and my wish list, recording-wise, is as long as my already-did list, which took seven months to cover. I do have some appointments but I'm skeptical. So I spent a little time doing something I've done a few times here already, to wit: took inventory of all I've done so far and asked myself, "OK, if I were to have to write my dissertation using only what I have now, what would it look like?" And, "What's the most important thing currently missing?" So leaving aside hundreds of pages of notes, transcribed interviews, theory texts, etc., the video recordings I've got so far look like this:

Instruments	Musicians	Taksims	They Analyzed	I'll Analyze
Ud	4	12	9	3
Kanun	3	8	3	5
Tanbur	4	18	10	8
Kemençe	5	8	1	7
Ney	4	10	5	5
Y. Tanbur	3	9	8	1
Violin	3	4	1	3
Clarinet	1	1	0	1
Voice	1	1	0	1
Totals	28	71	37	34

...and the main question I have is whether to spend the next three weeks trying to get more new players into the first four columns, or to try to track down already-recorded players to help me move some of the "I'll analyze" column into the "they analyzed" column.

This is a major issue because my original methodology required that all of the analysis be done by the performers themselves, in order that the study be their interpretation of what they're doing and not an interpretive imposition on my part. But no matter how hard/smart I hustle I think there are going to be quite a few taksims whose performers won't have interpreted them, and I would prefer not to simply throw those recordings out. On the other hand, there are a dozen important players I'd still like to record fresh - all but two of whom have already said "yes" - but what with their schedules (concerts, foreign tours, giving exams, getting ready for vacation - and the myriad daily issues that have kept me from meeting with them already)... well, it's looking like an uphill battle, one way or another.

Still, looking over what-all I have done so far keeps me from a whirling panic.

Which reminds me - we did finally perform our Mevlevi sema last Thursday (dressed as in the above picture), playing Hüseyin Fahreddin Dede's Acemaşiran Ayîn-i Şerifi with two whirling dervishes and their semazen in a three hundred year old Sufi tekke. Got some medium good video of it, too. Thanks go out to my friends at the Nasuhi Mehmet Efendi Dergâhı for welcoming me so warmly into the group (Nasuhi Mehmet Efendi Dergâhı arkadaşlarımın beni çok hoşça içine aldığınız için teşekkür ederim)!

Also got to hang out a bit with Jeremy Haladyna last week, with whom I studied composition and orchestration back in the day. He was here for a few days as a guest conductor for a concert at the conservatory at Istanbul Technical University (invited by lecturer and fellow UCSB composition alumnus Michael Ellison), and gave a little presentation of some of his fantastic electronic pieces, after which we walked our little legs off seeing the wonders old Constantinople.

Finally, let me recommend the Santral İstanbul Energy Museum, where I spent Sunday afternoon - part modern art museum, part exploratorium in a beautifully fixed up old power plant at the very end of the Golden Horn - I want to move in and start throwing parties right away. Free shuttle from Taksim (in front of the AKM) every 20 minutes; 7 lira for most people, 3 for students to get in. Bar, restaurant, picnic area out front. Go see some art somewhere, anyway!

OK - again, big love for my mom. Take care, yourselves.

Bonanza!

2009-05-16T17:23:00.008+03:00

Eymen Gürtan: Nihavend Taksim (click here for a version with some reverb and no subtitles).

My goodness, what a week. After last week's luxuriant, work-free lollygagging with out-of-town guests Kathryn and Jaynie I was afraid it would take a mammoth effort to get myself back into the research game (especially since, as I've mentioned before, I need to hustle as much as possible before most of the performers I want to work with leave town for summer vacation), but I needn't have fretted; I bagged a record fourteen taksim recordings in the last three days - whew!

The first were two taksim-s (in the makam-s Bayati and Nihavend) by ney player Eymen Gürtan (whom see above - also see the website linked to his name for the ney-s and, especially, tespih-s he makes), then yaylı tanbur player Nuri Benli made two for me (in Rast and Uşşak) after ayin rehearsal - our sema having been postponed by a week. Then yesterday I went to the school in far Maltepe where young tanbur star Murat Aydemir teaches (and thanks go out to mutual friend Nicolas Elias for the introduction) and he laid open a treasure chest of obscure and complex makam-s: Bayati-Araban, Arazbar-Buselik, Isfahan, Muhayyer-Sünbüle, Suzinak and a modulation between Gerdaniye and Gülizar. I'm a sucker for the obscure and complex, and Murat had me at "Bayati-Araban"!

Somewhat exhausted from the early-summer heat and long bus ride, I dropped in to say hi to ud luthier friend Mustafa and it turned out he had an extra ticket to a concert right there in Kadıköy, so we met up with his wife Nurcan and ud student Serap, and although strictly speaking it was 'art music' rather than 'classical' (that is, a late-Ottoman/early-Republican mixture of classical and urban popular styles) I recorded there three more taksim-s; two on violin (Mahur and Uşşak) and one on clarinet (Hicaz), and a vocal improvisation ("gazel," in Uşşak). Got home by 1 AM, very ready for the weekend.

If I do as well as that in the next three weeks I'll be a) very lucky, b) stoked for my research, and c) much in need of a vacation - wish me such luck ... and may your projects be going so well!

Ordinary Shenanigans

2009-05-04T22:24:00.005+03:00

Nothing special to report other than that I didn't actually take last week off, as I'd planned. I kept asking myself, 'well, what would you like to do?' and the answer kept coming back, 'work!' The good news, of course, is that what I call work is generally a lot of fun. So I went to some concerts and rehearsals and made the rounds of ud luthiers (helping Wim of Belgium get all the details right on his order with Mustafa hoca). Recorded eight more taksim-s for a total of 53 so far (but most of those without their players' analyses, yet). Pored through some Turkish music theory books. Lined up the special clothing for next week's Mevlevi sema ('whirling') ceremony. Yep.

But today was pretty vacation-ey and since I'll have a guest from Santa Barbara for the next couple of days it looks as though this week will be the Spring Break I've been hoping for. Today made the new main graphic for this blog and changed the color scheme (not in love with the options, but this is probably better than the grey - though that was good enough for winter). Anyway, just writing to say hi... I'll ask some of the artists I've been recording if they wouldn't mind my putting up some short recordings here, so you can see what we've all been up to.

Finally - continuing to find links of things Turkish that I can't really get you directly - I recommend James Meyer's blog for insightful analysis of political happenings around here. Enjoy! Back soon.

Cool and Partly Notated

2009-04-27T20:26:00.008+03:00

Working pretty intensely these two weeks, as much with recordings as with heavy texts, and only after a day of starkly contrasting beauty and frustrations did I remember that I'm the one who has to announce my own Spring Break, so that's what I'm going to try to do this week - that is to say, nothing much. But I did get a lot done - came up with some interesting angles on what I've been gathering, wrote a few dozen pages of the dissertation (things that need to be said even before analyzing all the performances, framing...), bought and partly read a few good books on Turkish music theory (in Turkish, of course), devised a novel way of notating taksim improvisations on a structural level (see clouds in above picture), saw and recorded more concerts, met yet more fine musicians ready to help out with my work... all in all the project is coming together promisingly, I think.

So, leisure... Friday night played ud and sometimes frame drum with a group of (mostly non-Turkish, all inexplicably francophone) 'classical Turkish' musicians in Molly's café near Galata Tower (the tall, red-eyed thing in the picture) - whole lot of fun, and we even played a couple of pieces I wrote myself. Molly's off to the Ukraine next week, but I think we're going to try to make it a regular Friday night gig. I'm hoping to write something new for us during the 'break' - that's play time, for me. I'm a little torn between trying to write and play in a style approaching 'authentic Turkish' and just leaning into whatever feels good - it's all in 'legitimate makam,' but sounds a little funny to the locals (at least I've got it to the point where they've mostly stopped saying, 'oh... sounds Arab' - nothing wrong with that, of course, but I've been shooting for just 'sounds good'). I usually say, 'it's California makam' - gets a laugh and you can't really argue with it.

Meanwhile, my Mevlevi ayin-playing group has got a gig in May (if you can call it a 'gig' - we'll be playing for a 'whirling dervish' ceremony), and I've got to see if I can borrow the appropriate robe and tall woolen hat from someone. Going to play Nayi Dede Salih Efendi's Acemaşiran ayin-i şerif - good stuff.

Yep, looking forward to resuming the work, actually, but this week my aim is strictly vegetable.

Hoping you and yours are well. Oh, here's a song and video someone (someone? Why, it was Ms. Erica Ruhl, lately of Berlin) shared with me and and I just can't let go of it - maybe you'll like it, too: Oren Lavie's "Her Morning Elegance" (it'll start playing the tune immediately, but hit the stop button and scroll down to the get it with the video - it's worth it). And that reminds me... I recently came across the website of graphic artist and photographer Ms. S. Zaza, whose depictions of Istanbul are better than I'll ever be able to share with you, myself... go wander around there a bit to see what it looks like, here.

A thought goes out to my beloved aunt Norma, who last week moved along into the next thing after life, having filled this one up rather nicely. Olev ha sholem. Enjoy it now, kids!

Further Springiness

2009-04-12T11:11:00.006+03:00

Happy Passover and Easter, for those celebrating them, and happy springtime for all of us (in the northern hemisphere)!

I got to a seder the first night of Passover after fellow Fulbright-Hays researcher Josh W. found a connection to the Chabadniks here in İstanbul through someone he knows in Saint Louis. They're a bit underground; figuratively because they don't have any official recognition by the state and are apparently none too tight with the local tribesfolk, and literally as the very nice dining hall (with industrial kitchen, two bathrooms, small library, etc.) are in a basement apartment with a bank vault door that only opens a third of full - kosher little bunker. Started at 9pm and for those of you who haven't been, this is a four or five hour sort of ritual supper - I had to leave around 1am to catch the last boat back to Asia, but ended up sharing a taxi with a lady and her little son who live close-by. Finished the ritual drinking and reading at home alone, but it was a nice trip overall. I can't stand eating most fish, the less so when it's been gefilted, but my perfunctory nibble had a very complex taste and I imagine a fish-loving person would've thought the rebbetsin's treatment of it sublime - I liked her chicken soup, anyway, and praise all the work she had to do to get us 40 adults and 15 or so kids through the evening, working like a coast guard galley hand all night and four kids of her own there, to boot. Thanks and chag sameach Reb and Mrs. Mendy.

Spring comes ambivalent recently, the weather as like to close as open you day to day and day to night. Yesterday a freezing wind down from the Ukraine brought the mufflers and beanies back just as I was fixing to burn my socks and tie on sandals. People (that is men) tell me 'in İstanbul you can't trust the women or the weather.' I have no close experience with the former, but I'm about ready for some sun with more confidence in its gait.

My recordings are coming along well; I'm now up to 44 of them and feel I'll be able to relax that part of the hunt after I've got four or five more key musicians on video. Looks as though I'll both have and need fewer than originally planned (90), which is fine, though I may keep going since it's by far the most fun part of my labors.

Not laboring, of course, brings its own pleasures as well, and aside from attending some fine concerts I've spent time recently with fellow researcher/musicians Tristan D., Nicholas E., and Nicholas R. (lately of Brussels, Paris and Montréal respectively), the latter having found a few regular restaurant gigs, asked if I'd like to play ud with him in one; he heard I also write music in makam (that is, in a traditional Turkish style) and we played through a handful of pieces in my apartment, which he liked and is practicing for the gigs. Nice! Tristan and I spent a day visiting ud makers and ended up running into Sagra and Pedro, two Spaniards who'd come all the way from Córdoba just to buy an ud from the first luthier they found on the Internet (Faruk Türünz, rightly accounted one of the best Turkish luthiers and a very nice fellow) - turns out Tristan and I are both fluent in Spanish and we took them around to see 'our' luthier Mustafa Copçuoğlu (another of the three or four 'best' in Turkey, though he was out of town that day at an ud conference in Afyon) and ud master Necati Çelik. A strange and pleasant series of coincidences was all that, and I imagine all the more so for Sagra (a bandurria player) and Pedro (her patient boyfriend), who'd never been here before, don't speak any Turkish or English and are complete novices to the instrument they'd come to seek.

Also finally met up with Jaynie Aydın, PhD, folklorist, anthropolgist, belly dance teacher extraordinaire and Santa Barbara friend of friends who lives in İzmir, eight hours south of here - we've been Facebook pals since our mutual friends virtually introduced us and we get along like folk (in a good way, that is). She's leading a tour of İstanbul sponsored by the Smithsonian, and we hope we'll get to dine together again while she's up here. She and her husband Cenk have very kindly invited me stay with them to extend my research to İzmir (where Cenk is a grad student in music at Ege University), and I'm looking forward to hosting her SB cousin Kathryn here for a couple of days next month.

So, as the young ones are saying, 'it's all good.'

And that's about it for now. I'll leave you with a poem that spilled out during a recently aesthetically escalating e-mail exchange with fellow traveler Rami G., who's coming in June and for whom I am having an ud made by way of luthier Ali Nişadır. The poem, untitled but amounting to an Ode to an Ud Yet Unbuilt, was just a fancy way of conveying 'we got the details ironed out and I've ordered the thing,' but I'm pretty happy with the way it came out:

Ancestral tulip blooms in wood and silk

Singing from beyond the gathered border of this world.

Who plants in spring, among the buzzing renaissance, defies he gifts abundant?

Not greed but lifely come and go he celebrates, and cerebrating plans

Not more for more but more for yes! requests.

This ape so wise to know his season and the next

In summer reaps reward surpassing reason.

Upon his lap will sit his lover and her song

For celebration foolish and forever!

Busy Week + Happy Nevruz

2009-03-23T07:41:00.007+02:00

Well worn from a busy week, I'm happy to report another 4 taksim recordings (by udi Mehmet Emin Bitmez and neyi Eymen Gürtan) and 8 analyses (by the same, and by tanburi Özer Özel), and a meeting with kemençe legend İhsan Özgen, not to mention further adventures with luthiers Mustafa and Ali. Had to postpone a recording session with tanburi Murat Aydemir and neyi Salih Bilgin, but that's a-coming, as well as one with yaylı tanbur player Vasfi Akyol, inşa'Allah. Whew!

March 21 marked the coming of spring (and the Persian/Kurdish/Central Asian new year "Nawruz/Nevruz," though I didn't see it widely celebrated here), and I'm glad for the change of season, though it's been cold and rainy, and we even got another 45 minutes of snow. Perhaps I'll ease into the transition by starting to go out in shorts and sandals with two sweaters and a muffler - a look not everyone can pull off, and I make no guarantees that I will succeed where others have failed, in this regard.

Anyway, I personally celebrated spring's nominal arrival Saturday night at a party/jam session in Göztepe, where my ud and I joined ney players Eymen and Cem, duduk player Özcan, and singer/hafız Huzeyfe with our host Ali on ringed daire. We played a couple of standard classical pieces then got down to the seriously fun business of trading taksim-s (improvisations - technically a gazel, when sung). Everyone was playing in top form, my own such being something of a pleasant surprise since I barely practice at all here, am not taking lessons, etc. There's something to be said for osmosis. In a related note, I had a moment this week when it occurred to me that I was actually speaking Turkish without sounding like Tarzan. That only took five months. I still have days when I sound like a complete bozo, but I'm beginning actually to suspect that after another five months I'll be pretty well fluent in this monster tongue.

So let's leave it there, with blessings upon all our monster tongues... Happy Spring!

(P.S. I'm just guessing about the links above that are supposed to go to YouTube - it's still a forbidden site here, and I can't get at it even with filter breakers - if the links don't work, I suggest Googling the name of whatever it is and seeing what you can find.)

Adventures in Ud Land

2009-03-07T08:42:00.009+02:00

Playing an 1894 ud by renown luthier Manol (Manolis Venios), restored
by Cengis Sarıkuş. Save up your nickels, kids - bidding starts at $30,000! (Photo: Sinan Erdemsel.)

Back in the saddle after that long month of upper respiro-purgatory - still remnant, but at this point it's probably irritation from bad air; coal and wood fires, diesel smoke from ferries and buses caught in the fog - a traditional Istanbul winter. But I've set up three appointments for making new recordings next week, and had the energy to play again with my weekly ayin group, and to meet with Necati hoca for a lâvta lesson, so things are picking right back up.

Friday I went on a little luthiery safari, that is, my friend Sinan and I visited the shops of a bunch of instrument makers. The focus was on ud-s, but we started off at the Cümbüş shop where I got to hang out with brothers Fethi and Ali Cümbüş - we hadn't seen each other since 2005 when I was doing research for my master's thesis on the instrument their great grandfather invented. They're very warm people and it was a nice reunion.

We then visited the the workshops of Ali Nişadır, Alaattin Civelik, and Cengiz Sarıkuş. Many beautiful instruments, my goodness, and in every price range - from very reasonable $700 beauties to restored historic pieces in the tens of thousands. For instrument junkies like myself it is a bit pornographic - in fact I must admit to feeling a twinge of guilt in regard to my relationship with "my luthier," Mustafa Copçuoğlu, "seeing other luthiers" like this, but the world is wide, isn't it, and I haven't even mentioned Feridun Obul, Ramazan Calay or Faruk Türünz. A boy can dream.

And that's the latest from my little world... I hope all's well in yours, too. Back soon, inşallah.

Medical Leave

2009-03-02T08:25:00.003+02:00

Well, this will be a quickie as there's is little to report, friends. I finally started taking some antibiotics for the 'Flu That Ate February (that is, for the bronchitis it had become) and they work fine, but wear me out completely. What they gave me is Cipro, which I understand is the same remedy they offer rhinoceri with anthrax. Powerful. Anyway, my work has been reduced to maintenance - getting notes in order, reviewing older video, reading other peoples' dissertations etc., added to studying Turkish, learning some new repertoire on the lâvta, and watching re-runs of Battlestar Galactica online.

My mind is ready to get back into my work (and make up for what it takes for a wasted month and tremendous laziness) but the rest of me is not quite up to it - another three days of rhino-med left, and I hope that's it for 'flu season. I'm anticipating that the recording part of my research will slow down quite a bit during the summer months, when artists are touring or on vacation, which makes hustling through the springtime all the more important for me. I'm just beginning to worry about that. Meanwhile there's nothing for it but rest and liquids. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Post-Literate Humor

2009-02-18T09:37:00.009+02:00

Parental Discretion

Despite being in the midst of a game of musical 'flu - we all keep giving each other the updated version of our latest midwinter virus - I actually have gotten some useful research work done of late. But that's not very entertaining, so I thought I would post here some play-time pieces I've made while resting between bouts of usefulness. The idea was to bring the communicative power of icons (and other simple signs) to their next logical level. I'm sure this is not a new idea. In any case, here's what I spun out. They're named to provide an extra layer of entertainment but it ought to go without saying they they ought to go without saying. Enjoy!

Escalation

La Différance

You can never go home, again.

(I wasn't sure it was obvious enough, this one.)

Glubat Se.
(Latin: Let him blow himself.)

Some Days Are Low

2009-02-15T21:26:00.008+02:00

Howdy friends. Well, I'm on the fourth day of a feverish sick (same one, it would seem, that I had two weeks ago, and thought I'd had done with), and a bit down. Stuck in this apartment staring out at the rain. Today I heard of the death two days back of a good friend, Lou Genise (pictured), age 38, of various cancers, in LA. He brought great riches to all his friends' lives, but I'm feelin' pretty broke, now.

What to say. I'm just going to post here this link to him breathing some fire and a piece of music I wrote and recorded for three friends named Lou, and some explanatory text below it. And then I'm going to drink a little and try to get some sleep.

A Tale of 3 Lous

I’ve had three friends named Lou. One of them, Lou Harrison, a composer, taught me among other things to appreciate long-lined melodies of the sort common in the classical Turkish music I now play and compose, but rarer in Western music, which I was studying at the time I met him. He passed away at a respectable old age, having gotten his nickel’s worth, and then some. They’re making a documentary of his life here.

Another Lou, Lou Genise, was a fire-breathing, triple-X, Godzilla-taming space gaucho of long acquaintance. At only 35 years of age he got liver cancer a couple of years ago. The first doctors to see him gave him six months, but he was having none of it. After about eighteen months of aggressive treatment and his usual kickass drive he was *this close* to being cancer free, but it recently came back with a vengeance that even this buffalo of a man couldn't take down and live to tell the tale, and I am very pissed off at cancer. You can see him at play here.

The third Lou, Lou Savett, at 76 and strong as a bull came down with pancreatic cancer last March that swept him away in a shockingly short six weeks. My girlfriend (his step-daughter) and I got to his house in Santa Monica about forty minutes after he'd gone, but our last times with him had ended with peaceful smiles. He was a mensch of the old school menschen and I don't think they make them like that any more. When we got back home to Santa Barbara, full of the gravity of life and death, I wrote this piece to celebrate my three friends named Lou.

(The piece is also called Hüseyni Peşrevi: Üç Lou Hikâyesi, though here in Turkey it has been criticized as neither a true peşrev nor strictly in makam hüseyni - I am holding it to a different standard of authenticity, and you may call it whatever you will.)

New Year for Trees

2009-02-09T11:39:00.002+02:00

Hello all! Not much to report on the research front (I hope that slow and steady will do the job, since that's what I have to work with). I just wanted to thank all of you who have (and who yet will) wished me a happy birthday - all of 43 solar revolutions completed successfully as of today - and remark on the delightfully silly Jewish holiday Tu b'Shevat, the New Year for Trees, which is also today. Didn't think they even wanted one, did you? Well, they're already drunk and half-naked in my neighborhood - I expect some sort of fruity fireworks to break out at any moment, and it's only noon.

Anyway, I'm not planning on doing anything special for the day (though am not working, either), but I did have a good time at my friend Sinan's last night, which will stand for a party. Earlier in the week he'd said some musicians were going to meet at his place (which, as I have mentioned before, is also the tomb of a Sufi saint, Ümmi Sinan) and would I like to come play? Well, it turns out to have been a house concert, and when I got there the musicians said, "OK, now we can start!" and lead me to a room with maybe 30 to 40 people waiting for the performance to begin. Awkward! I'd never heard any of the music before, though there was sheet music, and, a little shocked, I declined to play the first half, which was all religious music - hymns and whatnot - since I didn't want to screw it up for them, especially at a saint's house. But I joined in for the second set, for which there was no written music, but it was all secular tunes - easier to follow, less serious for the audience, and some of them I knew already, so I jumped right in with both paws.

Anyway, it's the first performance I've done on this trip, and it was fun and everyone enjoyed it - I got some good feedback afterward, and my lâvta was a big hit with the musicians. On the whole it seemed to me to be an apt set-piece/metaphor for life - "Surprise... you're on, kid!" - so it was a good birthday present/celebration.

And that's it! I think I'll wander around to see if I can find a decent Chinese restaurant. Thanks again... back soon!

(Photo of almond tree by Nicolás Pérez.)

You May Feel Some Discomfort

2009-01-25T06:37:00.011+02:00

75 Redwood Spirit 2, Mark Ryden

Pardon me if my language is a little lumpy; I caught some kind of 'flu bug two days ago and am at the end (I hope) of its feverish phase at the moment. Stuck home with nothing but this beautiful view, my instruments, and high speed Internet to keep me company - not wholly unpleasant, actually, despite being achy and stupefied.

So, it's been a few weeks since my last entry, and research-wise they have been pretty good weeks; I've made another nine recordings - ud, violin, and tanbur - and heard a few concerts, and also got in quite a bit of 'quality time' hanging out with musicians in their offices. Also, I've been invited to play once a week with a group that gets together to play and sing Mevlevi ayin-s here in Üsküdar (this is the music that accompanies the 'whirling dervishes') ... it's a bit rare, and I'm lucky to have found them and to have been invited to join in. It's about one third professional musicians and two thirds amateurs, maybe twenty or so people any given week.

I don't know if I mentioned that I give copies of the little movie clips I make (see "First Recording Project" under December posts) to the artists who want their own, and a couple of these are shooting around the Internet, on Facebook, etc., so now they're asking me to put my name on them (that's very thoughtful - thanks!) and even to translate the analyses into Turkish. Everyone (artists and students, that is) really likes these... it's a more condensed way of explaining/learning what goes on in a taksim (solo improvisation) than they are used to seeing at one go. Good for me, because it gives artists I haven't yet worked with a tangible incentive for working with me. I'd like to figure out a 'creative commons' way of copyrighting the clips, but I have to consider the whole issue in more depth, preferably with a clearer head, so for now I'm just putting the normal © under my name for the clip itself and ℗ (full rights to the music) under the artist's name. (Any opinions or advice on this? Even though we ethnomusicologists talk to each other about 'copyright issues,' I hadn't expected to have to deal with any in quite this way.)

Meanwhile, I am still getting used to the Asian side of Istanbul, and to my neighborhood (Üsküdar) particularly. Previously I had lived only in different European neighborhoods of the city and thought I knew what the place 'was about.' But this Üsküdar is really a different zone. People from both sides, of course, opine that theirs is 'the real Istanbul,' and I can't really disagree with either party, but the feel of a modernist, sophisticated, secular city that pervades most of the European side seems to hold for only a couple of neighborhoods on the Asian side, my own (which hosts the paranoid religious right party) not included. I'll start making a little list of the differences to share with you in a later post.

Partly related... I don't know what the press' or public reactions to the recent situation in Gaza have been where you are, but here they have been universally and fiercely partisan in a way that I had not seen previously in Turkey (formerly considered an 'honest broker' regarding the conflict, having long-standing and largely neutral ties with both the Arab world and with Israel). I think it best to remain publicly discrete regarding any opinions I may have on the subject - one is bound to piss someone off even bringing the subject up - but I will say that it seems to me that if recognizing the suffering of only some of the perpetually traumatized people of the region were an effective way of stopping that suffering, it would have been over a long time ago, and we could all say, 'what a great tactic that was' and move on to more pleasant things. In fact it appears only to maintain the conditions under which all of the people in that area will continue to try to forge their traumas into viable identities, and thereby continue to consider violence a reasonable and primary solution to political problems of the sort that dozens of other peoples have long since worked out much more peacefully in the age of the nation-state (absent, of course, the insistence of much of the rest of the world that the conflict is really all about them, the actual suffering of their brOthers being necessary to validate the symbolic suffering that maintains internal political positions at a safe remove from actual harm).

It's like the aftermath of a car wreck where all the bystanders are fighting over who among the injured has the right to go to the hospital. The injured and their representatives can argue later about who was at fault, who pays what reparations, changes in driving laws, revoking of licenses, whatever, but first get the suffering to stop. Humanity is more than 'my side is right, and theirs is wrong.' If, upon closer inspection, one's sense of humanity seems to be contributing to the perpetuation of human suffering, it might be time to expand one's ideas on the subject. Not to mention that doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is an index of lunacy. That so many in Turkey - and the official rhetoric especially - have moved from a position favoring an end to all of the suffering in that region to one that condemns only certain kinds of violence (regardless of any position with respect to the current sub-crisis) seems to me to bode ill for all involved, and if history is any guide, probably most of all for those whom the new rhetoric pretends to support.

Anyway, it has lead to a few awkward conversations.

And that's the report from this side... I'd better go track down some soup, now. Thanks again for stopping by!

New Continent, Same City

2009-01-08T13:46:00.010+02:00

Howdy folks! It's been a while since I last wrote, mainly due to my having moved to Üsküdar on the Asia side of the city, and only today getting the Internet connection set up. Above, I've posted a little movie showing the view from my balcony (and office, bedroom, and living room)... I invite you to think of it not as a pretty dull movie, but as a rather interesting postcard, like the paintings in Harry Potter films. But keep the sound on if you'd like - finally - to hear that new lâvta of mine; here, after a short taksim, I'm playing Segâh Saz Semaisi by Neyi Osman Dede (1642-1729). One of my favorites. (I've been practicing Mesut Cemil Bey's Nihavend Saz Semaisi to play for you, but it's not ready for prime time, yet.)

I was hoping to catch some of the normal traffic on the Bosporus in this video but I had a run of mediocre luck with it - at the very end there's a short bit with one of the huge cargo ships that, along with oil tankers and other vessels, are constantly taking heavy stuff to and from Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria (except when you're trying to film them. Leftward is south, by the way). It's still surprising for me to see them casually passing by so close. While I was downloading the raw footage from my camera two days ago, a smallish Turkish Navy submarine passed by going north, and about half an hour ago I saw it heading back south, but I didn't catch it on video... ah, well! Quite the Zen experiment, watching the sea for hours, hoping for six and a half minutes of continuously interesting events. This was the best I could get, but at least the wintry sunrise colors are nice.

Haven't had any more snow here, so my snow-naming project is on stand-by, but the research is coming along bit by bit. Yesterday had a long interview (but no music) with two ney players, then a music recording (but no interview) with an ud-ist whom I'd first met in Santa Barbara last year when he came to UCSB with a group of dervishes ("Didn't you used to have long hair and a Mongolian beard? You play cümbüş right?" Indeed, I confess). And I have appointments to meet with them and other folk tomorrow and next week, so it's all good, as they say, on the research front.

Well, I'll leave you with that, then. Healing wishes go out to Denise's dad, and to friends Lou and Will... "geçmiş olsun."

First Snow

2008-12-30T17:17:00.008+02:00

I'm not from one of those cultures that has a hundred words for snow. We're lucky to have just the one, and that mostly employed to describe something distant and abstract, like unicorns or self-replicating machine elves (which might be more common in Southern California, depending on one's chemical disposition at any given moment). This morning's "light flurries" reminded me of nothing so much as the first ash-fall of the fire season - albeit with the temperature all wrong - and I understood thereby the aspect of nostalgia associated with this strange substance.

Native Istanbulites seem, like myself, to be both eager to see some, and unprepared to describe in detail this unusual phenomenon which, just a mile or two in any direction away from the city's ubiquitous water, is socking in friends and family for a long white winter. I am preparing therefore, first in English and later to translate for my fellows, a few terms of description to refine our perception and understanding of this subtlety called "snow."

There is naso, the snow that gets up in one's nose immediately upon opening the front door. Startling, but seems to disappear before any danger of asphyxiation. Its insidious cousin the windy co-worker seems ever to be right in one's face, no matter which direction one turns.

There is jellice, the snow that falls upon the impenetrable layer of jellyfish on the surface of the Bosporus. You'd think it would kill them but they only seem annoyed. It is said that if one attempts to lick fresh jellice one's tongue will stick to it until a warmer season, but this is partly "urban myth"; one would stick anyway (an experiment not worth repeating).

There is rap-snee, which only accumulates in the bad haircuts of the fashionably young; the surgeon general, which makes a cigarette even less pleasant than usual; and the reminder, a slow moving snow that engenders frequent passing thoughts that one should've worn gloves, brought that hat, bought better shoes despite the cost, or - if one has got all those thing with - that one should have peed before bundling up.

There is the morgan-stanley, which dissolves houses in minutes (see photo above). There is the nearly invisible paloma loca that drives mourning doves to shelter among vaguely menacing berries (see photo here).

Yes, it is a bold new adventure, identifying snow, and this is only the first day we've had any! Fortunately the Turks do have a highly detailed vocabulary for describing hot tea - the refuge to which I now abandon thee, gentle reader. Thanks again for visiting... more in a few days, for good or ill. Coming soon: a new apartment!

Colder than it looks!

2008-12-28T19:32:00.009+02:00

Some weeks are made of wet cardboard, and that's the way it is. As you no doubt know, this city was once the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and like its western counterpart, it is built on seven hills. I think I managed to walk up and down at least four of them this week, in the sleet and rain with my bulky bag full of interview gear - computer, video camera, recording equipment, power converters, cables, etc., wrapped in plastic against the elements - trying to hook up meetings with people who, for one reason or another, weren't where I thought they'd be, just then, couldn't I come back tomorrow, lather, rinse, repeat? OK. More exercise than I'd really wanted.

But I finally did manage to meet everyone, and even to record a concert with some good geçiş taksimleri (solos going from one melodic mode to another to introduce a new pre-composed piece) - the concert was all 18th c. compositions by Sultan Selim III, done in honor of retired master singer Dr. Alaeddin Yavasça, who learned music in the lineage of the Sultan's teacher Tanburi İzak. Very nice, and the program notes included the notation for all the pieces (thanks to Prof. Şehvar Beşiroğlu!), so that's a big score for a future ensemble I hope I'll put together on the other side of PhD-dom.

Other silver linings were:

Beautiful weather X-mas day (see photo above) - took the ferry across to Anadolu Hisarı to hang out with ex-pat extraordinaire Bob B., who made Indo-Persian food for the occasion.

Bought new boots (they say it's going to start snowing, perhaps even tomorrow) - first socks, now boots and gloves, even - we're a long way from Southern California, Toto!

Spent a few hours on separate occasions with two students here, one an Australian singer who wanted a basic makam (melodic mode) crash course, and another a German grad student in Systematic Musicology (a cousin to Ethnomusicology, which I was surprised to hear is no longer taught anywhere in Germany - they were pretty seminal to the field, back in the day), who is taking a semester abroad here to study ethno, and who recently bought a cümbüş, and wanted a copy of my master's thesis on it. (As most of you know, by writing that thesis I de facto became the world's leading expert on something extremely obscure - which only means that if someone famous is ever killed by, or perhaps marries, a cümbüş, I'm the one NPR will call for an interview.) Anyway, so much of what I have learned on my long weird path through musicianship has been either given freely or from beyond the normal duty of paid teachers that I like to spread the good karma around a bit, even if it means retracing Roman hills in the sleet.

With that I wish you a Happy New Year, and hope that your holidays were good ones. More soon!

Got Inspired...

2008-12-21T01:42:00.007+02:00

... by the trip described below, so I made this piece in PhotoShop from little drawings I inked in a tiny notebook I keep in my pocket all the time. I call it, "Discovery, Authority, Gossip." (Click it for a larger version.) (That's what a rainy Saturday is like.) (Sometimes.)

Also, Happy Chanukah! I'll let you know if the doughnut and latke faerie makes it all the way to Turkey.

(Ok, later that day... reconfigured my little drawings to form an official Chanukah greeting... voilà!)

A Modern Vocabulary

2008-12-19T16:47:00.005+02:00

Well, another wonderful, non-stop seven-day cycle has passed. This week I was fortuitously invited to a Sufi music concert (with much backstage hanging out), a new classical music ensemble's rehearsal (with several big name players, and a surprise visit by retired tanbur superstar Necdet Yaşar), and a doesn't-get-more-authentic "whirling dervish" event (Şeb-i Arûs) commemorating the death of 13th c. poet Rumi at the tomb of 16th c. Sufi poet saint Ümmi Sinan, whose modest shrine has been in the care of my friend Sinan Erdemsel's family - that is, the saint's own family - lo these 400 years. At these and yet other places I met with three ney players, a kanun player, an udist, a singer, and two tanbur players, and invited them all formally to participate in my research, and all were enthusiastic about it. So far I have about 16 classical musicians ready to work with me, and an invitation to do more recordings/interviews at the conservatory of Ege University in İzmir, a few hours down the Aegean coast. It's going to get very busy very soon, I think.

Which is one of the reasons I took some time out to leave that time-burnished world and spend a few hours at the Istanbul Modern (museum of art, that is), and catch what's happening in that scene. It's nestled in amongst mostly abandoned dockside warehouses (which it seems once to have been, très moderne) and has two floors; one with a permanent collection (mostly paintings, mostly 20th c. Turkish artists) and one for ever-changing exhibits. My favorites on the top floor were painter-poet Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (who painted the lutenist at the top of this entry), and a sculpture by Tony Cragg. Down the staircase made of chain and bullet-proof glass with bullet holes, I found lots of avant garde photos (the classics: Cindy Sherman, Ed Ruscha, Birgit Jürgenssen, et al.), and several video installations, the best being four short films by Zbig Rybczynski, including his Oscar winning 1980 classic, Tango.

Ending the tour in the museum's really, really nice bar/café (best cup of jitter in town, incredible view of Topkapı Palace across the Bosporus, four kinds of bourbon, etc.), I made a vocabulary-building exercise of my notes on the titles of Turkish pieces. Now I will be able to drop into everyday conversation such gems as:

Capitalist Production Process: Private Property

The Land Where Strange Things Happen

A Schizophrenic Going for a Walk

I Advance Masked

Contemporary Monster

Ugly Faces

Straightjacket

Held Together by Water

Curiosity is an Instinct

and

We’re Like Fingerprints, Don’t Look Away

Finally, last night I had a delightful time at the birthday party of fellow Fulbright fellow Candace Weddle on the terrace of the gorgeous steel and glass Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, whose view is also to die for... I'm sure we'll all tire of hearing that here, friends, but there's no tiring of seeing it - come visit, if you can.

Local Color

2008-12-15T14:51:00.009+02:00

(Tiny, illegal Iranian cigarette, next to "normal" sized one, and a glass of tea. My people call it "breakfast.")

Well, it has been too long, hasn't it, friends? I've been practicing a lot on that lavta, but the piece I want to record for you here is fancier than I had supposed, so I'm going to give it a little longer to gestate. Nor have I taken any photos of note lately, so while we gather those goodies together for a future post I thought I might recollect in prose some little scenes from daily life in İstanbul, such as...

...the ugliest - and most popular - haircut for twenty-something boys, which looks like a cross between the the Dying Gaul and a 110 volt chicken plugged into a 220 socket. Apparently a version of the "fauxhawk," its message, as one local fashion critic puts it, is, "I’m a bit of a rebel, but I still listen to my mother." Does nothing to ameliorate the accompanying black suit and shirt with red satin tie and pointy leather boots.

...Santa Claus! Apparently the original Saint Nicholas was from somewhere on the Anatolian coastline (as was Saint Paul, a nice Jewish boy who made Christianity safe for the goyim - and my, look what they've done with it!), but there seems to be in Turkey a popular confusion of Christmas and the January 1st new year (in effect since 153 BCE, by the way), so for instance, very religious Muslims won't say "happy new year" and the only guys in Santa suits - usually pretty grubby looking, with a cigarette hanging off the lip - are selling new years lottery tickets. I just saw on TV a little cartoon separating music videos from commercials that featured a squat little Santa bouncing up to a snowman, which opened up like a Russian doll to reveal another one inside it, which opened up to show a classic ball-and-fuse cartoon bomb, which blew up Santa. Cute! I have not yet heard of any Christians around the world burning flags in protest. Meanwhile I am grateful not to have incessant Christmas music follow me everywhere - as is no doubt the situation in the US, now - except at the Starbucks (sometimes a man just needs decaf), where all the favorites are in heavy rotation. Except for the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts Christmas stuff, I could do without it in a more or less permanent way.

...Speaking of protests, in the summer months demonstrations of all sorts are weekly if not more frequent events on İstiklal Caddesi but I hadn't seen one for a while until today. Somehow they are well enough advertised that twenty or thirty riot police - strapping young persons of all genders in black plastic exoskeletons, shields, clubs, a few with machine guns - are always waiting there in advance, joking with each other in blocky formations that take up far too much of the narrow, always crowded street. After squeezing past them to get to my connection for contraband Iranian cigarettes (I'd tell you where, but I don't want to burn my dealer) I asked him, "what's the protest du jour?" But he didn't know, only making a wistful remembrance-of-summer face saying, "I didn't even notice it."

..."Gel, gel, gel! Dur!" (Come, come, come! Stop!) The cry of the men helping a stranger park a car in (always) precarious and ill-advised spaces. Any time a man or group of men is passing someone trying to park a car, it is considered courteous to stop and help out, without being asked. It takes a village. This reminds me also of a scene I saw years ago, also on İstiklal Caddesi, when someone yelled "thief!" and a young man began trying to run away from his prey... the anonymous crowd coagulated around him to block his path and started slapping him until the police came (and took him into a nearby stairwell, no doubt to finish the job). Hadn't expected that public reaction. Men walking arm in arm, even holding hands, and greeting each other with kisses on the cheeks also surprised me at at first... thoroughly "manly" behavior, here.

...Last I was here, in 2003 for five months in the bohemian neighborhood described here and in the first post, I got the feeling that a Haight-Ashbury 1967 sort of scene was just about to boil up, and that if I could only understand the poets I could take its pulse. Well, my Turkish is still not quite poetry-ready, but I was encouraged recently to see the irregularly published pulp journal Kadıköy Underground Poetix, with its strange mixture of classical surrealism, Beat writers (Brautigan, Burroughs, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassidy, and Leonard Cohen are pretty big in this scene), old school DIY punk aesthetic, and local I'm-not-sure-what-it-is-yet. What's odd is that rather than burbling out of the bohemian zone, this is catching fire in Kadıköy, a traditional and religious neighborhood on the Asian side of the city. I shall keep thee posted! [Update: Kadıköy is indeed not as stuffy as I'd thought, but it's not exactly Paris in the '20s, either - I'll update again if a spontaneous outbreak of truth and beauty explodes therefrom any time soon.]

I guess that's enough local color for now. I've made four more taksim recordings, one with Necati hoca and three with my friend Sinan Erdemsel playing yaylı tanbur, but I don't know whether I'll be putting them up here or not. I see that in an earlier post I wrote that I was hoping to get 30-50 such recordings, but that was a mistake... I meant to say that I hope to get as many performers to record three taksims each for me, so 90-150 recordings altogether. I don't think they'll all fit here, but perhaps I can figure out a non-dissertation-y way of making them available, by and by.

Well, thanks for reading! Comments are welcome... I'll try to post again soon.

Oh... here below is a little PhotoShop magic of me and my lavta... enjoy!

Lavta Day!

2008-12-07T17:01:00.016+02:00

Well, it's a rainy, chill sort of Sunday, but just the right weather for staying home and playing my new lavta. What's a lavta, you ask? The photos (and eventually a recording) will tell the story better than I can, but it's something like an ud (the instrument Necati hoca was playing in the previous post) with a longer neck and tied-on frets - a lot of them! People in the know say it has been around here for three or four hundred years (and is related to the larger, metal-stringed Cretan laouto), then virtually disappeared around the 1930s (who knows why?), but it has recently started making a comeback.

I picked this one up yesterday at the Kadıköy (Asian side) workshop of brilliant İstanbul master luthier Mustafa Copçuoğlu (photo, left), who also made my ud, and just finished this instrument for me. Wow! It is great! Here I am in the third photo with 9 year-old Münir Kavçakar who came to Mustafa's (with his dad, Bilâl, a fine singer) to have his own lavta re-strung. Happy lot, these lavta-players!

So, the instrument has 26 tied nylon frets (for one octave, compare with a guitar that has 12 in the same space), which takes some getting used to, as does the tuning - I tried a couple of the usual options and settled on DAdg (from the bottom up) - which would seem normal enough for ud players back home (who normally play at the Arab pitch level), but here that's kaba rast-yegâh-rast-çargâh, which changes all the scale shapes and positions that I'm used to, and makes me play everything transposed one way or another... it's a little rough right now, but it will make me a better musician, by and by. Anyway, here are some more photos. When I've relearned a piece I know I'll record it and put it up for us to gawk at.

Here are two shots of the back; the two woods are "pelesenk" (a kind of rosewood) and "porsuk" (which also means badger in Turkish, but here means yew).
To the right, here, we see a close-up of the face. Mustafa tuned the spruce soundboard such that it has a nice long ring when you thump it, not to mention a great sound overall. As a special gift to me (that is, without telling me ahead of time) he made the rosette, pick-guard and top of the bridge from turtle shell. They are gorgeous and I love them, though I was expecting horn and wood. I know those turtles are having a hard time of it, but it was an honor that he made them especially for me and... well, that particular turtle was long gone anyway. Now at least I'll get to sing its praises. More soon!

(Oh... the unusual shape of the pick-guard is a design Mustafa bey came up with for the late ud master Cinuçen Tanrıkorur; it's the letter C, for his first name. Cinuçen usta was Necati hoca's teacher, so in a sense I am in his musical "lineage," though I don't think I study assiduously enough to deserve to say so.)

First Recording Project

2008-12-03T15:50:00.004+02:00

This is the first of some 30-50 recordings I hope to make for my project here. Many thanks to Necati hoca for the beautiful performance! (Also for analyzing it with me, and for permitting me to post it here!)

The subtitles are a shorthand analysis of the compositional rules he is using from memory to create this unique event. For makam-niks and oud-sters I should mention that he is playing a perfect fourth lower than we would expect to hear this makam, which transposition scheme (ahenk) is called "kız ney," i.e., he's "playing makam muhayyer in the kız ney ahengi." Internal to the makam, though, the note names remain as they would without the transposition, so the note muhayyer is on the finger position you'd expect to call "hüseyni," the makam ends on the note dügâh even though it looks like "hüseyni aşiran," etc., all just one set of strings lower than normal. With the bottom string tuned an octave below the tonic (and the rest in perfect fourths) it's very effective for dügâh-based makam-s.

Questions and comments are welcome! Enjoy.

Lazy Autumn Sunday

2008-12-01T00:51:00.005+02:00

Beautiful sunny day after a week of cold and rain in İstanbul, so I got out and about with my camera and made you this mini travelogue slide-show, covering my neighborhood and the next two neighborhoods northward along the European side of the Bosporus. (Thanks to David Delany for the inspiration! Music credits: Yinon Muallem and friends, from his recent release Sultan için Klezmer, "Klezmer for the Sultan," KAF Müzik, Istanbul.) (P.S. "ARIT" is the American Research Institute in Turkey, where I'm staying.)

Abstract of My Dissertation Project

2008-11-27T14:01:00.007+02:00

For the record, here's what I'm up to over here:

Taksim: Improvisational Practices in Republican-Era Classical Turkish Music (and their Implications for Current Definitions of Makam)

"By comparing current solo improvisations (taksim-s), recordings of such performances from throughout the twentieth century, and the definitions of their makam-s (melodic modes) as found in currently used Turkish music theory textbooks, this study aims to determine the major changes to both improvisational practices per se, and to the definitions of makam-s over the course of the Republican period so far (i.e., since 1923). This study takes improvisational practices employed in the taksim genre (called gazel when sung, rather than played on an instrument) as the central practice of classical Turkish music, and as the touchstone for definitions of makam-s. This point of view differs from the standard 20th century way of reckoning makam definitions in partially Westernized theoretical terms, which instead uses unchanging, canonical repertoire-oriented examples rather than improvisational practices as models."

(In other words, I'm studying what musicians are actually doing - and how they think about what they're doing - as contrasted with what the textbooks say they're doing.)

It's shaping up to be a very fun project, and I'm getting a lot of positive feedback from musicians here who think this sort of study is long overdue, and are very willing to improvise on video for me and to analyze their own playing with me afterward. I'm looking forward to beginning that phase after the upcoming Kurban Bayram holiday. Meanwhile I'm collecting old recordings and music theory textbooks (old and new) for comparison.

Newly Arrived

2008-11-26T19:40:00.007+02:00

Well, actually I've been here in İstanbul since November 8th. The first week was characterized by heavy jet lag, compounded by staying in a cheap hotel in Asmalımescit, a notorious "party zone" at least since Marco Polo lived around here in the 13th century, and still rocking well into the wee hours. (Can't believe I lived there for 5 months back in 2005, doing master's work on the cümbüş - did I sleep at all?) The rooms below mine were inhabited by four Russian ladies - prostitutes, one has cause to suspect - who regularly returned "home" around 5 am for an hour of crying jags, screaming competitions and general drunken throwing things at each other, prelude to another hour of loud apologies and tearful making up. Apparently the management was profiting more from their stay than from mine, and would do nothing to halt their charming repartee.

After four days I moved to the American Research Institute in Turkey in much quieter Arnavutköy ("Albanian Village"), a block up from the Bosporus (see photo above): two floors of old manuscripts and seven rooms for visiting scholars such as myself (and doesn't it feel all warm inside to say so? I half feel like sewing elbow patches on my jacket and buying a pipe, but it is not a requirement.) Both of these neighborhoods are on the European side of the city, but I'm hoping to move into a place in Üsküdar, on the Asian side, around January first, after fellow UCSB ethnomusicology grad student Denise G. has moved out of it (though we'll be sorry to see her go). Eventually I'll post photos, and then we can not believe the amazing view, together.

Since overcoming the lag, I've been having preliminary meetings with some key musicians whom I hope to interview/record for my project (more about which in another post, soon), and gathering up some books and CDs I'll need also, but Kurban Bayram ("Sacrifice Holiday," commemorating Abraham's near-sacrifice of - ahem - Ishmael) is coming up and everybody says, "sounds good; come back after the holidays." Gives me time to polish up the paper I've written for the Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award 2009 Competition (Topic: "Pluralism in Contemporary Turkish Society and Politics," first prize $20,000), which finally gives my master's thesis something exciting to do.

Meanwhile, I got my residency permit (ikâmet) today, which went fairly smoothly thanks to Ülkü hanım at the Fulbright office (many thanks), who patiently waited with me amongst the many Bulgarian and Central Asian immigrants there, wielding her formidable bureaucratese at all the right moments... it only took five hours and about $380. Now I'm legal... whee!

Well, as you can see, I am only just getting my feet wet with this blogging business... let's see how it's going so far... more to come soon (I suppose).

(photo by Aslı)