Final presentation delivered at Thomas J. Watson Fellowship Conference (University of Puget Sound, August 2, 2015).
Let me tell you who I was one year ago.
I'm a classically trained violinist. I've spent hours every day for the last fifteen years practicing major and minor scales and etudes as well as playing in orchestras and chamber music groups, all with the goal to make Mozart sound delightful and Beethoven dramatic. Everything I perform has been carefully rehearsed for hours to ensure bow direction and articulation is synchronized across whatever ensemble I'm playing with. I have been the concertmaster of the MIT Symphony for all four years of college, and now a soloist with the orchestra, so there's an added pressure and thrill to lead the group and perform with precision.
I'm Type-A, and so at the same time, I'm balancing my music major with my other political science-oriented major in East Asian Studies. I'm taking too many classes, trying to do well enough in macroeconomics and number theory to get Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude while publishing papers on the rights of overseas Filipino Workers and linguistic variation as a result of social media censorship in China. I have worked overseas for a media organization, and my longterm goal is to become an Asia-based foreign correspondent for a major news outlet. To this end I obsessively make to-do lists, plot my daily schedule in ten minute increments, and chronically, neurotically, strategize how I'm going to do well enough in my classes to ensure I achieve my goals in college so I can succeed at life.
It was at this point that I was selected to be a Watson Fellow. My college advisor, a faculty composer at Wellesley, was one of the first Watson Fellows years ago, and later the director of the Foundation, and from my first year at Wellesley he regularly suggested I consider applying. He is one of my closest confidantes, and so I took his advice to heart, after discussing potential project ideas, proposed a project around manifestations of musical multiculturalism, the subject of my senior thesis. Still, I had no idea what my day-to-day life on a Watson would look like, and having lived abroad before myself and also spoken to Watson Fellows who warned of chronic miserable loneliness, it would be an understatement to say I wasn't keen on the prospect of showing up in Indonesia, violin in hand, riding on the hope that I would find some way to fill my time.
Let me tell you about one chapter of my life on the Watson. Let me tell you about...Pak Sanglah.
He's a fifty year old man who is a literal guru, one of the few masters of Balinese rebab, an instrument made from a coconut that, with its loose tension strings and fluctuating pitch, sounds a little like a cat in pain--that is, if you can hear it over the throng of gongs, drums, flutes, and metallaphones that also make up the gamelan musical ensemble. Sanglah is the happiest person I've ever met, and likely ever will. We meet every day in his studio, which is open to the family temple and the chickens that run around it. It's also overrun with tokke lizards that live in the thatched roof and occasionally fall on the floor with a big splat. I stay there for at least three hours a day, but usually more like five, during which time he plays a slow, repetitive, tuneless melody that really doesn't sound so different from yesterday's. Nothing is written down, and I try to mimic his fingers until the patterns saturate my mind long enough to stick. We will play this forty-five second melody nonstop for thirty, forty-five minutes, before we take a short break. He is a man of constant smiles, gratuitous high-fives, and catchphrases. On the back of each of his two hundred business cards he has handwritten the words: "Success is good. Happy is better. If you want be happy, be happy now." Early on in our relationship he discovered I liked the fruit juice he made from the trees in his garden. He exclaimed, "Student likes juice, and teacher likes juice?! We are so blessed."
He believed so strongly in me, and gave me so much of his time and energy, and as I progressed in my lessons the intervals came more naturally and I started recognizing the signaling of melodic patterns, getting better at anticipating how a melody would develop based on its rhythms and internal phrases. At the same time, I am meeting other local and foreign musicians, who, as soon as they discover I am a violinist, invite me to jam, collaborate, perform with them. It is terrifying at first, because there is no structure, no notes written down, but I get in the habit of saying yes to everything, no matter how far-fetched it seems. Recording session for Kailash Kokopelli, Native American flute playing Swedish sound healer? Of course! Music festival with Hawaiian shamaness who is a self-proclaimed channel for Gaia the Divine Mother? Why not! Improvisation on Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon" with a bunch of self-taught Balinese jazz musicians? Terrifying, but I'll try anything once. I make friends with a bunch of local Indonesian musicians, and we start playing nightly concerts all over the island--bars, cafes, art collectives, festivals...They have tremendous faith in themselves and the universe, and constantly tell me to stop worrying, that there's no rush. After a certain point, I stop being so worried about messing up the music, about sticking to some predetermined plan--and instead of feeling inhibited I start to be creative and have fun. I even start to write and improvise and perform my own music, using the musical traditions I have been learning up to that point--a totally foreign concept for this classically trained violinist, I'll remind you. People see me on the street and know me as "the violinist." It feels like instead of competition there is encouragement among this artistic community, and for the first time ever I have permission to get completely out of my comfort zone.
I don't have time now to tell you about sleeping on the street during the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, about going on tour with internationally-acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, cockfighting on Silent Day in Bali, learning Turkish classical and Roma and Black Sea music in Istanbul.
Instead, let me tell you about who I am now and what I've taken from this year.
The most obvious thing I've taken from this year was accomplishing my project. I set forth with the self-assigned, albeit abstract, mission to witness and learn about many ways multiculturalism can manifest itself in local musical traditions. In this last year, I've had the opportunity to play with hundreds of musicians and speak with hundreds more, perform many dozens of concerts in formal and informal venues alike, and been exposed and come to love and play musical instruments and styles I didn't even know existed a year ago. In that same vein, my definition of what makes music, and what makes a musician, has radically evolved from the definition I started with as a western classical musician a year ago.
At the same time, the pace of life I set for myself has been completely transformed as well. In the places I've lived in this last year I found so many people that make more time for one another, and give so much of themselves. If you meet someone for afternoon tea in Turkey, you'd best not make evening plans because you're probably going to be invited for dinner, and possibly breakfast the next day, too. I was constantly amazed by the generosity and patience my teachers, friends, and random strangers showed me in this year, and that's something I want to continue to emulate going forward.
Similarly, my Watson Fellowship project gave me permission to reach out to people for help and advice. It became easier and easier to meet new people and put myself in situations that risked embarrassment because I knew the potential reward of a meaningful relationship, or at least a story for my blog, would be worth it. I made incredible friends and had mind-blowing musical opportunities as a direct result of casting a wide net, taking a chance, and trying to reciprocate offers of help whenever I could. I could tell you a thousand stories about the unlikely circumstances that led to me befriending an onion farmer on a volcano or traveling to Anatolian caves with the Willie Nelson of Turkey, but I'll save those for another time, and plan to keep having more.
The one thing I thought I would take from this year that still has yet to come is clarity about the future, where I go from here. I kind of thought that after a year of percolation, the answer about "where's this all going" would pop out right on time. Actually, after a year of meeting so many people from all over the world who approach life and music in vastly different ways, it seems I have less of an idea about what I'm doing with my life and skills than I did before. On the flip side, I'm more aware of the world of possibilities that are out there, and more assured that if I continue to be open to that world of possibilities I'll find a way to thrive in it.
What I do know for sure is that I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity, which has been truly and significantly transformational. Thank you, thank you, so much.
Since I arrived in Istanbul at
the very end of April, people I meet have routinely asked me, out of curiosity
or social obligation, "How do you like Istanbul?" It would be a lot
easier to just show the pearly whites and say, "I like it a lot!" The
more honest answer that I still don't know, and it's still overwhelming in many
respects. I try to explain to the inquirer that I just came from four months
living in a village in Bali, a place where I was (at the end) established and
independent, a place where time seems to inch along slowly without anyone
urging it to go faster than it needs to, a place where people seem
"clinically happy" for how much they smile at each other without
provocation. I arrived here still despondent about leaving the island and the fantastic
experiences I'd had there, and also completely clueless about what to expect
about life in Turkey.
Seaside palace
As you may recall, Istanbul was
not part of my original Watson project itinerary, but rather the suggestion of
Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor, with whom I had discussed the obstacles
I was then facing studying music and living in Urumqi last fall. Instead of
going to Azerbaijan, as I had originally planned ("It will be similarly
difficult, but you won't be able to speak the language," he had pointed
out), he suggested I go to Istanbul and Crete, and put me in touch with master
musicians in both places.
As my departure for Turkey drew
closer, I was still completely unfamiliar with the culture and music I was
about to experience. I generally try to strike a balance between avoiding
preconceived notions and assumptions, and conducting exhaustive logistical
research, about a new place—I find it so much more rewarding to learn about a
place through experiencing it firsthand rather than trying to piece together a
picture from third-party, biased, or filtered narratives. Going to Turkey, I
tell you what I did know (or have in my mind)—I had studied Constantinople
(now Istanbul) briefly in the context of of an art history seminar in my senior
year of high school, so I gathered the place was (surprise) culturally
significant. Given its proximity to, and/or inclusion in, that vague area we
Americans label "the Middle East" and tend to only hear about in
ominous or threatening news reports, all of my family members expressed concern
about me going to Istanbul (especially as a white woman traveling alone—refer
tothe
story of the murder of Sarai Sierra). They said they were unwilling to
visit me in Istanbul and encouraged (at some times, begged) me to reconsider
coming here. My only other context for Turkey was my time in Western China,
where Turkey and all things Turkish are in vogue among the Uyghur people.
In Istanbul, beauty and poverty are often side by side
Galata Tower
Thus, as much as a I wanted to my
first steps in Istanbul to be unmarked by assumptions about what Turkey and
Turkish people were like, upon arrival I could feel the alarm bells in my head
ready to go off at any moment. I won't go so far so as to say I was paranoid,
but I was certainly uneasy and on my guard. (It didn’t help that a few days
later, people were warning me not to go outside because Istanbul was erupting
in mass protest on the anniversary of the violent government crack down on the
Gezi Park protests in 2013). I had reached out to the Wellesley Club of Turkey
before arriving to ask for advice on life in Istanbul as well as a place to
crash on arrival, and in typical Wellesley fashion multiple alums came forward
offering both. Their advice was unanimous: "Istanbul is like any other
large city—there are some areas you shouldn't wander alone at night, but if
you are street smart you will be fine." I ended up staying with an alum
who had married a Turkish man and had two adorable young daughters, who were so
enthusiastic about playing my violin after I let them try it that I had to
start locking my case when I wasn't around (lest they start jumping up and down
on my bed while strumming--I saw it happen). The alum was incredibly generous;
in exchange for some babysitting, she hosted me for nearly two weeks while I
viewed apartments all over the city—one was great but in a sketchy
neighborhood, one was tiny but in a happening area, one was actual closet with
a bed in it (and a window facing a wall). I finally tore myself away from her
hospitality and moved into my current digs: a surprisingly spacious apartment
with lovely big windows, musically tolerant neighbors, and an amiable Turkish
master's student of studio art who is chronically gone--paradise! (She was
actually around one day when I was practicing; when I came out, she said,
"Do not worry about playing music in the house—I heard your voice. It is
not disturbing.")
But back to
battling assumptions about Turkey—one of my greatest concerns about daily life
in Turkey was tested in my first week when I was lost and late on my way to a
Wellesley Club gathering, and it seemed that the best option was to take a cab.
After reading a multitude of travel sights that had warned about taxi scams, as
I hailed a cab I braced myself for being taken for a literal and figurative
ride. As soon as I got in and did my best to explain where I wanted to go, it
was immediately evident I was a foreigner, and the driver began sizing me up in
broken English:
"Erasmus?"
he asked, inquiring whether I was a foreign student on an Erasmus Scholarship.
"No..."
"Holiday?"
"No..."
"Business?"
"No, not
business."
He was
puzzled. "What are you doing in Istanbul?"
"I...I
study Turkish music! I playkeman[violin],
and I want to studykemançe
[Turkish bowed string instrument]!" "Kemançe?!" The driver's
face lit up. "I am from the Black Sea [where kemançe is an integral part
of the folk music]!"
He reached
into the glove box and pulled out a stack of Turkish music CDs, fanning
them out like a poker player revealing his royal flush. He popped one in,
cranked the volume to its maximum, and turned around to gauge my reaction to
the sound of thetulum[Turkish
bagpipes] blasting the car and passerby alike.
This is not exactly what he played, but just to give you an idea of what was going on in the car:
In such situations, there is
only one correct response:
"It's
great! What wonderful music!"I
declared, forcing my grimace at the cacaphony into an enthusiastic grin and
some rhythmic head bobbing. Don't get me wrong—the music was excellent, but
after a certain decibel level even Turkish bagpipes lose their charm, believe
it or not.
Nonetheless,
he was pleased with this response, and glancing at the road from time to time,
sampled for me three or four more CDs from his collection while I affirmed for
him my deep and undying love of pop versions of Black Sea folk songs played at
stadium volume.
As we pulled
up to my destination, I reached for my wallet—
"For
you, who love kemançe, no charge!"
"No,
come on, I must pay you!" I said, taken aback.
"Just
give me two Turkish liras," he retorted, requesting less than one
dollar compensation for the four-dollar fare.
We went back
and forth, but he insisted I not pay him more than that. Then, he reached back
into his glove box and pulled out a CD with an outline of a man‘s face on the
front.
"Do you
know who this is?" he asked.
"No, I'm
not sure…"
He lowered
his voice for dramatic effect. "Atatürk," he said
reverently, referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern-day
Republic of Turkey and nationally venerated quasi-god figure in
Turkey. "For you!" He handed me the CD, a compilation
called "Ataturk's Beloved Songs."
"No, no,
I can't accept this!"
After a lot
of back-and-forth and many heartfelt thank you's, I left the taxi with a radically altered stance on Istanbul's cab drivers (and Ataturk's Beloved Songs, of course—there was no way to
refuse).
My good fortune continued even
after I left the cab of the very generous and nationalist cab driver. As I
mentioned earlier, Kayhan connected me with a nationally renowned master
musician in Istanbul, Derya Turkan, a kemançe player who specializes
in Ottoman classical music. Given that Derya is in high demand as a performer
in Turkey and around the region, he has been extremely giving of his time and
concerned about my well-being in Istanbul. In his words: "If Kayhan sent you,
you must be special--I will teach you for free, and present to you many
musicians, and luthiers, instrument collectors." In my first week in
Istanbul, he made good on his word and brought me to his rehearsals for an
upcoming concert series with musicians from Greece. The ensemble included a
soprano sax player, a singer, a percussionist, and a Cretan lyre player
(picture the harp-like instrument Orpheus used to subdue the forest creatures
in Greek mythology, complete with turtle shell) performing a mix of improvisations on Ancient Greek songs
and American jazz standards alike. Conveniently, the common language between
the players was English, so I was able to follow the dialogue during rehearsal.
I was at the final rehearsal
before their concert the following evening when Derya announced that he would
not be able to perform with the group because he had been called early to
Belgium for his tour there. He left to prepare for his departure, but I stayed
to listen to the rest of the rehearsal because I enjoyed it, the Cretan lyre
player was borrowing my amp for balance purposes, and, frankly, I had nothing
else to do. On a break, the players started talking among themselves in Greek,
and then suddenly turned to me:
"Audrey, we were thinking,
maybe, if you would like, you could play two or three songs with us."
I was stunned and delighted that
they would ask me to join them—t hadn't crossed my mind that the possibility
would even be on their radar. The only problem—I didn't have my violin with
me.
"Maybe we could borrow one
for a few hours from a nearby music shop," they suggested.
And so, that is how I ended up
playing a dilapidated child-size violin (more box than instrument) with
Vassiliki, Aliki, and friends. I warned them that the sound was going to be
awful, and assured them that my own violin would sound much better. I also
warned them that I did not know anything about Greek or Turkish traditional
music styles—I could improvise, but it more than likely was going to sound
like Chinese and/or Indonesian music.
"Even better!" they
exclaimed.
Long story short, they really
liked my playing, and I ended up playing the entire concert with them (and
singing a song in Ancient Greek as well)! They were really pleased with how the
concert went, and hopefully we'll have opportunities to play together again in
the weeks to come. (I also have an open invitation to Athens—we'll see if that
can happen before it is time to come home!) A few excerpts from the concert:
A few of the musicians also invited me to watch their concert on Prince's Islands a few days later—here are a few photos:
A view of the city from the island
An oud player on a hilltop taught me this piece on the islands:
Derya also invited me to his
concert with Erkan Oğur, inventor of the fretless guitar and Turkish living
legend. It was good I didn't realize how famous he is until after I met him, we
had a very pleasant dinner, and he and Derya performed an incredibly moving
concert in a packed concert hall. It came up that they were traveling to
Cappadocia in central Turkey to play in a festival forty-eight hours or so
later; Derya asked if I wanted to come. I eagerly accepted the invitation,
booked flights, and a few days later met up with Erkan and their manager to go
to the airport. In the cab to the airport, I asked Erkan if he was really the
inventor of the fretless guitar.
"Yes. 1976." He told me
he had started as a violinist, studied to become a physicist, and then created
the fretless guitar so he could have the flexibility to play microtonal
makam-based music.
"Did anyone think you were
crazy when you invented the fretless guitar?" I asked him.
"Yes; my own teacher thought
I was crazy," Erkan said, telling me his teacher had passed away before he
could see Erkan's success with the new instrument.
When we got to the terminal, I
saw that the Beşiktaş soccer team was sitting at the same gate, occupied by the
hordes of fans asking for photos. Then, the fans saw Erkan, and soon he too was
surrounded by people complimenting his music and asking for photos. I saw that
one of the soccer coaches was eying Erkan; after a few moments, he strode up to
him holding a phone.
I had been told that Cappadocia
was visually stunning, but it wasn't until I was met by a canyon of man-made
caves and a veritable cave-castle from thousands of years ago that I understood
why everyone was raving about the place. After passing Mount Erciyes and gentle
empty rolling hills, the vivid canyon colors and rock formations come out of
nowhere. Derya and Erkan's concert venue capitalized on the scenery—the stage
was perched on the side of Uchisar Castle, which is basically a huge rock into
which an entire fortress has been carved, and which overlooks a cave canyon.
The best part is how hands-off the local tourism bureau apparently is. I didn't
see any guides or rangers monitoring the area, and there are no barriers around
the caves, and so while Derya and Erkan had their sound check, I trekked and
scaled my way into the caves with my violin in tow (hoping to duplicate the
cave sound experimenting I had done with my friend and flutist Agustian in
Sumatra). Let me just tell you (and humor me while I wax poetic for a moment),
there is nothing really quite like playing violin while perched in the ledge of
a cave hundreds of feet off the ground and overlooking hundreds of miles of
central Anatolian landscape, nothing quite like hearing your own sound bounce
off and respond to the walls of a centuries-old Byzantine fortress. Derya and
Erkan’s performance was fantastic (especially since the night of the concert,
high winds threatened to topple the stage equipment off the side of the castle
cliff).
Cappadocia photo interlude—
See the person at the top of the fortress?
I had stopped in Madrid on my way
to Istanbul to see my friend Rebecca (and mostly mope on her couch after leaving Bali); she more
than reciprocated by cheerfully coming to hang out with me in Istanbul. It was
great to see her; while I wasn’t completely emotionally settled with my change
of locale, I was far less depressed than the last time I saw her and relished
the chance to have a partner-in-crime with whom I could be a total tourist. We
went to the Grand Bazaar one day, and giggled at the ludicrous tactics the
salespeople use to get shoppers’ attention: “Hey sexy angel, let me show you
how to spend your money!” I also received a marriage proposal from a salesman
and the business card of a fur and leather merchant who asked if I would be
interested in modeling for his clothing line. “We have many Russian customers.
You would be good for this. You have face like baby.”
Marriage and fur modeling aside,
I had recently made friends with Feyza, a Turkish student in my neighborhood
studying environmental engineering, and invited her to join Rebecca and me as
we went to see the sights. A note to would-be tourists: everyone and her
grandmother wants to see the Hagia Sophia on the weekend—just don’t do it. The lines were
Disney-World-meets-visa-line-at-the-U.S.-Consulate-in-China long, and yet we
powered through, elbowing our way through the crowds at the dazzling harem at
Topkapi Palace and the eerie Basilica Cistern. By the early evening, Rebecca
and I were exhausted, but Feyza had a surprise for us:
“My friends have a boat, and they
are fishing. We can eat dinner on the boat.”
At that moment, I was so tired,
and the last thing I wanted to be doing was socializing with strangers trapped
on a dinghy, but at Feyza’s insistence we made our way to the pier. Imagine our
surprise to see a yacht waiting for us. Stunned, we greeted Feyza’s friend
Acilay, a girl our age with perfect makeup and a dream of becoming a Turkish
Airlines flight attendant one day, her middle-aged cousin, and his business
partner. They offered us tea, blankets, and a delicious dinner of the fish they
had just caught. Rebecca and I got a second wind, and just in time as Acilay
turned to me—
“Feyza says you are a singer.
Will you sing for us?”
I tried to explain that I was
first and foremost a violinist, but at the urging of everyone on board, I sang
two of my own songs. My performance was met enthusiastically, and soon everyone
was sharing a song. It came out that Acilay is a talented belly dancer, and we begged
her to demonstrate. She was fantastic, and she insisted we all get up and join
her as the yacht continued sailing down the Bosphorus. All of the sudden, the
music stopped—
“Now,” Acilay declared, “it is
twerk time.” And indeed it was. Lest you think that was the end, I assure you
we also had Black Sea dancing time and Balkan dancing time, and are looking
forward to a reprise next week when Acilay graduates university.
Classic Istanbul sights photo interlude—prepare yourself for a lot of tiles—
Blue Mosque
Palace rose garden
Hagia Sophia
Basilica Cistern
Blue Mosque
Despite how wonderful it was to
explore Istanbul with Rebecca, as I frequently have over the course of this
year I found myself once again plagued by doubts about my project. I worried
that I wasn’t doing enough, and that the Istanbul iteration of my project
wasn’t unfolding quickly enough. It had been useful to meet with Derya when he
was available, as he took the time to break down and and explain the rules of makam in Turkish music. In such music,
the makam determines the set of pitches from which a melody is derived as well
as the rules for how it develops. One thing that is quite striking is that some
pitches in the makam are not fixed, but flexible, changing position within a
microtonal range depending on the direction of the phrase. For instance, in rast makam starting on D, the third
degree if the phrase is ascending is more or less an F#; however, if it is
descending, the pitch has glissando, sliding down from a pitch lower than F#
but higher than F natural. And, if the phrase teeters around that third degree
before descending, the first time it is close to F#, the second time it is
slightly lower, but still higher than the third time, when it has the glissando
to a lower pitch (still higher than F natural). You see?! It’s actually pretty
intuitive in a way—the pitches of the melody conform to its shape.
Coming back from my tangent on
Turkish music theory, Derya’s crash course on makams was useful to help me
start to listen more critically; however, beyond talking about the music I knew
I needed to play it if I wanted to internalize it. Luckily, promises of future
music-making have started to arise. I reached out to Tolgahan Cogulu, a
classical guitarist and professor at Istanbul Technical University’s Center for
Advanced Music who has invented his own microtonal guitar with adjustable
frets; he says he is happy to play makam-based music with me and is interested
in arranging some pieces using alternative tuning systems from China and
Indonesia for us to play together. Feyza’s friend Egesu is a guitarist and
conservatory student who brought me to an experimental open music
session—that’s where I met Sumru Ağıryürüyen, a prominent vocalist and
conservatory professor who specializes in traditional and improvised music
alike; she is interested in collaborating with me on a music project, and also
went out of her way to connect me with Turkish violinists.
And so that is how I came to meet
Baki Kemancı, a violinist whose name means “Baki the Violinist” (he was
literally born for this). I had been baffled listening to recordings of Turkish
violinists, as the timbre they achieve is so different that I would sometimes
wonder whether they were even playing the same instrument as me. Balki gave me
exactly what I had been searching for as he broke down and demonstrated the
technique—a slow, womp-womp vibrato combined with precise patterns of sliding
into pitches. The effect is relaxed and vocal, but very difficult for me
because in many ways it is opposite everything I’ve learned from practicing
Western classical music. I’m really excited—Balki is detail-oriented and has
high standards as well as the high intensity I need to learn a lot in a short
time. At the same time, he seems really friendly, and according to Feyza, he
said, “You and I, although we don't speak the same language or come from the
same music tradition, we understand each other’s music-making.” (Did I mention
he doesn’t really speak English? Ah well, as usual I’m putting my faith in the
language of music.)
It has felt slow going in these
past weeks, and for the first time I am starting to feel pangs of readiness to
be home. But, I have seen in this year how much can change and develop in just
a few weeks, and I am optimistic that there is still time for my project to
take a few more interesting turns before it’s all over. As always, I will keep
you posted—
There has been a world of change on my end since my last quarterly report. I am writing from Istanbul, where I arrived a few days ago after passing through Madrid after flying from Bali to Paris. In short, it has been a whirlwind of culture shock--particularly upon arrival in Europe. I was despondent and mopey (to put it lightly) for days after leaving Bali.
Nora and me with the bride and her friends at a Balinese wedding (where I played rebab)!
Entry way to Balinese wedding
As I made more connections in Bali, 'jammed out' with more musicians, and was invited to play on more concerts, it seemed that I had hit a new musical stride in Bali and should ride it out. I basically said yes to every performance or collaboration invitation that came my way, and as a result, towards the last few months of my time in Indonesia, I was performing almost nightly in different venues (sometimes giving one performance on one side of the island and then biking to the other side to play another gig). I played with spiritual healers and reggae masters, I played rebab in a traditional Balinese wedding and also played in three shows in Bali Spirit, the island's largest annual music festival. Imagine hundreds of blissed-out, tattooed, dreadlocked hippies in one place peddling leather fanny packs and practicing their acro-yoga. After Bali Spirit one of the other performers came up and asked me if I had been using a distortion pedal--"It sounded like you were playing an electric guitar! It was awesome!" Another memorable comment from a different performance: "Audrey, I listen to you improvise and I am sure in your past life you were a Javanese person." (As said by a Javanese musician!)
A tangent about dreadlocked yogic hippies: In my various collaborations with Hindu chant leaders and Native American flute-toting medicine men, I had somehow carved out a niche for myself performing with sound healers. After a laughably pretentious recording session in which a medicine man repeatedly criticized me for not capturing the "essence of the night birds and rising dawn" in my musical "invocation of the divine through mystic poetry," I found myself at a dinner with many of his compatriots. It took me about half an hour of them talking about "the potency of the Grandfather" for me to grasp that they were talking about hallucinogens. Anyways, a Hawaiian shamaness and self-proclaimed channel of Gaia, the Mother Earth, heard about my violin playing and recruited me to perform with her at Bali Spirit. I eagerly agreed and showed up the following afternoon to her home. Picture a scantily-clad, heavily-tassled woman with a large lotus tattooed over her uterus playing crystal bowls, her emasculated partner Shamiracle, who could apparently do no right as she continued to scold him throughout the afternoon every time he hit a drum or blew a conch, a rhinestoned Russian with the plastic surgery of a former porn star who had recently changed her name in an Indian ceremony (and became increasingly annoyed as the other ensemble members continued to forget it), and Vasu Dev, a Norwegian with John Lennon glasses whose name belied how short his fuse was. And then there was me, wondering if I came off as way too normal to be part of the group, or if my musical journey through China and Indonesia qualified me as unorthodox enough to be one of them. In any case, they accepted me as one of their own. It was an interesting musical experience--on one hand, much of the spirituality with which the sound healers sought to imbue the music sort of cheapened it for me, but on the other hand, the lotus-tattooed singer had a beautiful and incredibly unique singing style that drew on overtones and yodels, and the freedom and presence with which she improvised was extremely effective.
Performing with Rizal at Bali Spirit Festival
Being pulled into the spiritual undertow of Bali's expat scene was actually a really valuable experience for me as a musician. None of the sound healers I met had formal music training; as a result, it was really interesting to witness and experience their approach to creating music. Nothing was really off-limits (and in many cases, the more bizarre and experimental, the better) and for me it was a very safe environment to experiment musically as well. The result in some cases was music that would be considered really avant-garde in a different setting. In one show Agustian, Miyoshi, and percussionist Arif and I improvised a piece in nine (an unusual time meter) based on the theme of the change from the rainy to dry season while Sako, Arif's wife and talented dancer, did contemporary dance; however, catering to the Eat-Pray-Lovers, the concert was advertised simply as an "ethnic fusion" journey to "meditation," which again I think diminished how nuanced and multi-faceted the piece was.
Sako, me, Arif, Miyoshi, and Agustian after our concert
I even graduated to writing, singing, playing my own songs, which was one of the most thrilling experiences for me because it was something I had never dreamed of doing before. I was surrounded by people from so many cultures and backgrounds doing just that and playing in their concerts, and soon realized that there was nothing stopping me from doing the same. I would brainstorm, create, and record a rough draft of a new song, and then show it to my friends, who would add their own instruments and musical ideas to it. They encouraged me to perform my own songs (and made time in their own shows for me to do so). I was initially really nervous since it was entirely new to me, but I went for it and received really great responses. I was so encouraged when an audience member came up to me and said, "You have an amazing voice--be proud of it and stand tall!"
Another huge highlight towards the end of my time in Bali was having my friend Nora visit me. Nora is traveling around the world on a traveling fellowship of her own exploring cultures that eat bugs, and sent me a message that she was thinking of popping over to Bali for a week or so on her way out from a month in Papua New Guinea. She asked if she could crash with me, and I, valuing my personal space but unwilling to tell her to "get a room," begrudgingly offered to host her. We ended up having a phenomenal time, and at my urging she stayed for the better part of a month. She has been traveling independently at the same time as me doing entirely different things, and it was incredible to hear about her experiences and compare successes and failures. She is one of the few people I have encountered thus far who can understand what it's like to make connections while transient, pursue an esoteric project in a foreign place, and watch the holes in your underwear get bigger and bigger. (One of my greatest triumphs was dragging Nora to replace her pants after a bumpy motorbike ride made it clear that the purple patches holding them together were no match for the life of a traveling fellow.) We sought out dragonflies for her to eat and introduced her to wandering hippies as "Peekaboo Nevernude, owner of Tissle-Tassle, a tassled clothing boutique" ("But my friends call me Boo!") It was great having her--as a traveling fellow, she is totally used to being independent and would set out for solo adventures while I would have rehearsals; at the same time, we totally related to one another and there were no limits on the fun we would poke at the mishaps we had had over the course of our travels.
Speaking of entertaining mishaps, Nora joined me and my friend Agustian to travel to his village in Sumatra for his sister's wedding blessing ceremony. As soon as we arrived, I was so grateful she was there--his relatives and neighbors overwhelmed us with hospitality and requests to take photos, and as the token foreigners in a village where few will encounter outsiders we were shuttled all day from one house to the next for photo ops while people continued to ask if (or assume) we were Agustian's fourth and fifth wives. I soon got really exasperated--I generally reject people who ask to take my photo on account of my being white, but it was impossible to do that to Agustian's family and friends, all of whom seemed to each have a few phones that each needed at least four photos...We stopped at three hospitals and took photos with all of the nurses and midwives, we stopped at the home of the village elder and took photos with village representatives there, we even stopped at a police checkpoint and, instead of paying a bribe, took a photo with the police. (We were later featured in the regional news.) Nora remained a good sport throughout, and when we were brought to Agustian's friend's family home late at night after a long day of posing and confronted the family waiting for us with karaoke, she took the microphone and sang campfire favorite "Black Socks" in the style of Indonesian dangdut music. What a champ.
One high point of the trip was journeying out to Gua Putri, a legendary Sumatran cave outside of Lampung. The myth goes that a princess was taking a bath when a man passed by and catcalled her. When she didn't respond to his comments (big surprise) he commented that, to ignore his flattering words, she must be made of stone--and lo and behold, she turned into stone, becoming the Gua Putri cave. This is a mythological manifestation of kutukan, sort of like the power of suggestion or the power of the word (for negative results). Anyways, sort of channeling fantastic musician Andrew Bird's recent project, Echolocations, in which he makes recordings in unusual settings (most recently, the canyons of Utah), Agustian and I brought the bamboo flutes and violin into Gua Putri, sought out the most resonant spaces, and had some fun improvising (I also played some Bach--typical.)
The loveliest-sounding part of Gua Putri
Men in Indonesia often collect gemstones, carry them around and/or turn them into rings, and show them off at every opportunity
After our short jaunt in Sumatra, Nora and I spent a few days in Jakarta while Agustian visited his other sister, and then parted ways as she set off to Laos and I returned for my final week in Bali. Feeling that I had become inspired, but also perhaps too comfortable, in Bali, I impulsively bought tickets to Madrid, deciding to visit my longtime best friend Rebecca on her Fulbright before making my way to Istanbul.
The reality of my decision started to set in a few days before my departure. Perhaps you can imagine how difficult it was to leave such an environment. People would see me on the street and know me as "the violinist," and when I would go out, I would always see people I knew. I was conversational in Indonesian language--not enough to be particularly interesting to talk with, but enough to venture off aimlessly on my motorbike, get lost, barter for something, explain my purpose in Bali, get invited to someone's village, know when I was being talked about, and get back again. Indonesia was an incredible incubator for creativity, one that fostered collaboration over competition, and a place where people were constantly encouraging one another to feel more, love more, create more without any rush or deadline to do so. For me, a chronically-busy and uptight classical musician, it was exactly the shot in the arm I needed (I remember being too terrified to try to improvise when I first arrived four months ago!), and leaving it I became so scared that I wouldn't bring that spirit of creativity and non-urgency with me--that I would be too scared or too uninspired to carry on without those people who supported and taught me.
My friend Mark, who I met on my first night in Ubud, invited me to play at his collective's open mic night the following day, and essentially triggered and supported my period of musical creativity in Indonesia, hosted a farewell party for me the night before I left Bali. It was tremendous to see everyone from different arenas of my life on the island come together, meet each other, and make music. My rebab teacher met a local artist and flute player, my fellow Seven Sisters graduates met Lanny and her family, who had hosted me when I first arrived in Bali, Soraya (my partner in crime for the last Terunyan trip) met Miyoshi (my partner in music-making). People who I had played music with and played music for all came out, and it was an amazing testament that in some small way, I had joined a community and made a network. The only one who didn't come was Agustian, who was apparently too sad to come. ("Someone stepped on my flute. G#. It's broken now. And I thought it would be too sad for me to be there.")
Farewell party jam session
I wept my way to Madrid, and spent the following days sitting shiva for my time in Bali. I had arrived in Madrid and reunited with Rebecca, who was in her chemistry lab during the weekdays, leaving me with nothing but time to mourn leaving my friends, my motorbike, my inspiration. Beyond missing the people I had left behind, I was terrified that "you can't take it with you"; namely, that I was losing the permission I had received in Bali to take risks, try new things as a musician, and think outside the box. I was utterly unable to do anything; my schedule consisted of waking up, weeping to Sufjan Steven's album "Carrie and Lowell," inspired by the loss of his mother to cancer, listening to the rough recordings from jamming out with my friends in Bali, crooning softly to myself, and repeating. Poor Rebecca, who had probably expected a more festive reunion, was a great sport about striking a balance between watching me sob and dragging me out of her tiny apartment. We did have a great time, all things considered (and I'll make it up to her when she comes to visit me in Istanbul in a few days); she took me to see a Steve Reich concert and violinist Joshua Bell's performance with the National Orchestra, we had tapas and paella, and saw as much as we could see in one day at the Prado.
I was indeed in a period of mourning, but now that I have arrived in Istanbul and gotten a glimpse of the sheer abundance of culture that seems to be oozing out of the city, I am encouraged that in a way things here will be "same-same but different," as they say in Indonesia. I have connected with a kamence player who is eager to take me on as his student, let me shadow his rehearsals and work at Turkish National Radio, performed my first concert, befriended a national living legend/inventor of the fretless guitar, and am on the cusp of meeting many more musicians (as soon as I can send off some emails). It's really hard starting over, especially since everything feels unfamiliar and foreign again, but at the same time I have faith that leaving Bali to get a new perspective in Turkey will be worthwhile and fulfilling. It has been already--more to come soon!
Illustration of me playing violin by my dear friend Miyoshi
I'm a classically trained violinist. I've spent hours every day for the last fifteen years practicing major and minor scales and etudes as well as playing in orchestras and chamber music groups, all with the goal to make Mozart sound delightful and Beethoven dramatic. Everything I perform has been carefully rehearsed for hours to ensure bow direction and articulation is synchronized across whatever ensemble I'm playing with. I have been the concertmaster of the MIT Symphony for all four years of college, and now a soloist with the orchestra, so there's an added pressure and thrill to lead the group and perform with precision.
