"Interesting Times"

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!

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

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

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

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

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.)