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.
At a dazzling Turkish National Television recording session for an upcoming Ramadan music program
For the last few weeks I have been lucky to have the chance to hop around Europe while continuing to immerse myself in the music scene in Istanbul. You may remember my friend Nick, who is a violist with the fantastic string quartet Brooklyn Rider as well as Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, who I have been consulting about my Watson Project starting months before my departure. He invited me last fall to join the Silk Road Ensemble's Asia tour, an experience which was an incredible highlight and huge influence on the development of my project. We had the chance to meet up again a few weeks ago when he invited me to come to Vienna and see the final concert of the Knights Orchestra, a New York-based ensemble that is notable for the freshness and vibrancy of its relatively young players and repertoire. Istanbul is such a international hub that it's easy to hop over to most destinations in the area, and so when Nick invited me to come spend some time seeing his concert and exploring Vienna for the first time, I just told him to send me the dates.
Even if I hadn't known Nick, the concert, which was held in the legendary Musikverein, was well-worth the trip. The hall itself is acoustically superb, as the sounds from the stage have warm resonance while remaining very clear to the players and audience (many of the players in the Knights commented that they were taken aback to hear for the first time musical interactions in their pieces between instruments that they had been completely unaware of in previous rehearsals and performances. Also, the hall's interior decoration is gorgeous, so there is a lot at which one can marvel. More importantly, the Knights' concert was really spectacular, and included works by Berio, Adams, Shostakovich, Milhaud, and Ligeti, as well as some Chinese folk songs arranged for a string quintet. The Adams work (The Chairman Dances) was incredible in its precision, and it was an added delight to hear how the players interpreted the Chinese folk songs (some of which I recognized from my erhu days)— they utilized a lot of the techniques of Chinese music tastefully, which is not a small feat. The concert also featured internationally renowned soprano Dawn Upshaw (when Nick introduced us before the concert, I had to refrain from saying to her, "You're THE Dawn Upshaw?!" She sang folk songs in around ten languages (including Armenian, Sardinian, and Azerbaijani) that Berio had adapted for his wife and included lots of vocal techniques unusual in Western classical (think high pitched trilling, yelping, and yodeling). It was certainly not the typical fare I imagine the Musikverein or Viennese audiences see very much, and I think the crowd was refreshed to see such music played with incredible skill, coordination, and creativity.
The Musikverein before the concert
After the concert, Nick and I spent a few days exploring the city—neither one of us had visited before, and I personally was excited to witness the "City of Music" firsthand and do sporadic Sound of Music reenactments. As it turns out, nowadays Vienna doesn't quite live up to the images I had in my mind of musicians spilling onto the streets and a culturally engaged public. ("That's Berlin," my college advisor Marty Brody retorted when I mentioned this.) To be fair, we did encounter a young opera company on the street rehearsing for a series of pop-up performances around the city of Puccini's opera "La Boheme" (set: pastel pink milk crates tied together). The majesty of the monumental architecture—domes, cathedrals, and promenades—is truly a sight to behold, In general, though, I was struck as much, if not more, by the telling absence of people on the street, in shops, and on public transportation. We would walk around these elegant neighborhoods and encounter maybe a handful of people. It didn't feel unsafe, but rather eerie, rather like the sort of feeling post-rapture or plague, where you can sense that a community once existed in a place but has since evaporated (leaving a few lucky or unlucky stragglers). Nonetheless, I had a really nice time in Vienna—we visited some nice cafes and restaurants, saw some interesting exhibits (Haus der Musik, the Arnold Schoenberg Center, and the Museum of Art Fakes) in addition to enough incredible architecture to last a lifetime. We unfortunately didn't have enough time to lay a wreath at Beethoven's grave as planned, but one can only do so much, you know?
With Nick before his concert at the Musikverein in Vienna
Vienna wasn't my only European hop in the last few weeks. My college advisor and resident life coach Martin Brody was traveling around Europe representing the college on official business and invited me to join him afterwards in Italy for a few days before he returned to the States. As I have mentioned before, Professor Brody (or Marty, as I begrudgingly try to remember to address him at his insistence) has been an incredible mentor and confidante for me since my first year of college, and also is the reason I applied for the Watson Fellowship at all—he continues to see great potential in me far beyond what I initially believe is possible, and has unfailingly supported me through thick and thin. I have also never been to Italy, and so making the quick flight over from Istanbul was a complete no-brainer. I arrived in Milan a day before we were to meet up, and got to spend the day with Cristina, my neighbor of one month in Bali who is from Italy and currently lives in Milan. We had had such a wonderful time adventuring together in Bali, and I had hoped we would see each other again before long—I just didn't expect it would be so soon! We shot the breeze and compared post-Bali departure depression stories while tromping around some of the sights of Milan. In true Italian fashion we went for dinner to an all-you-can-eat sushi joint—it seemed fitting somehow. It was a quick reunion and we parted ways the following morning, promising to stay in touch and meet again somewhere before long.
With Marty Brody, perching on a bridge in the heart of Florence
And then I met up with Marty, and, chatting as if no time had passed at all, we embarked on our journey to Florence and Rome. We have stayed in close and regular contact throughout this year, but it was so wonderful to be able to reconnect in person (and while zipping through the Tuscan countryside, I might add)! As a composer and the former director of the American Academy in Rome, Marty has a number of friends in both cities who we set off to meet in our short few days in Italy. We were on a tight schedule—taking a train to the next city in the morning, having afternoon drinks with one friend and dinner with a few others all in the same day—but we found a surprisingly abundant amount of time to explore the incredible historical sights, talk about our lives and next steps, and try a lot of gelato.
(Pause for massive photo interlude)
The Duomo in Milan
This is the moment where it becomes extremely apparent that, while I appreciated the majesty of the buildings I observed in Florence and Rome, I would be no help whatsoever in an Italian architecture-themed trivia night. I will try to save face by not describing the pictures at all...lest my captions devolve into, "Another really old and culturally significant cathedral."
Ancient houses and jewelry market on Florentine bridge
Sunset in Florence
Mosaics on the outside of the cathedral built on the sight where St. Peter was thought to be buried (actually not true)
Some ancient graffiti
Oh hey, Rome!
Roman Forum ruins. Julius Caesar was stabbed in the top left corner.
Ruins of the Roman Forum. See the Colosseum in the distance?
6:30 am at the Vatican Basilica!
Michelangelo's La Pieta, which I forgot was in the Vatican and was amazed to suddenly encounter
Casual lean, Vatican City/priest edition
In lieu of telling you that the hype about sightseeing in Italy is substantiated and that 6 am on a Thursday is a marvelous time to visit Vatican City, here's a tangent about these discussions of my life and the future: As this year has progressed and I have delved deeper into what it means to learn, play, and create music in different settings and cultures around the world, I have begun to reevaluate the role music plays in my own life. Music has been a fundamental part of my life since I was six, but having not pursued music solely up to this point I always assumed it was the “other“ thing I did, secondary to my seemingly more academic and professional pursuits. Up to the time I was applying for college, I had only seen few avenues for professional musicians; namely, become one of the few touring classical soloists, become an orchestral musician, or teach. I had seen enough examples of each category to know the very real hardships of the professional musician’s lifestyle, and also knew that at that moment I had other interests besides music I wanted to explore. Although I applied to and was accepted to music conservatories, I elected to go to a liberal arts college where I would be able to study Japanese and Chinese as well as music theory. And as it were, although I wrote (and published!) my fair share of research papers, interned abroad for a government agency and major media organization, and of course continued to study foreign languages, I simultaneously poured the same effort into my music. I spent at least six hours a week on the bus commuting to MIT where I was serving as the symphony’s concertmaster, spent many hours a day practicing solo, chamber music, and orchestral repertoire, and performed as a soloist with the symphony as well as with the Harvard gamelan ensemble as part of my senior thesis—in my music major. In other words, looking back I clearly was doing more than just dabbling in music—but to what end?
My Watson Fellowship has given me permission to embrace the mindset of primarily pursuing music. Meeting professional musicians, not only of the Western classical persuasion, but from around the world playing and creating music in various and numerous styles. I have met both self-taught and conservatory-educated musicians and composers who draw on their own musical experiences and environments to foster unique voices that resonate with a range of audiences. There have been traditionalists who seek to preserve the old ways and encourage the youth to hold onto the past; there have also been ensembles that take inspiration from the past but break common conventions to dare listeners to think critically about their own experiences, expectations, and societies. Meeting all of these people has made it obvious that the path to a life full of music-making is not singular, and is constantly being repaved.
What has also affected me significantly this year is the feedback I have received as a result of presenting myself as a professional musician. While I haven’t studied in a music conservatory, I have nonetheless developed a high capacity and skill level as a violinist through nearly sixteen years of serious and dedicated study. While I can still feel the room for my own technical improvement, this year has made me realize that being able to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto flawlessly is not necessarily the only benchmark for one’s ability to be a sensitive musician and effective communicator with an audience. I think of some of my best music-making this year—playing a solo from a Cantonese opera with a Chinese orchestra in Hong Kong, performing Edelweiss in a public square in Hangzhou, improvising with world musicians using pentatonic and modal scale systems in music festivals, bars, and cafes in Bali. For me these performances stand out not for their perfection, but rather for their success in connecting with their audiences. It was the audience members who came up to me afterward and told me how much they loved my sound, the musicians who invited me to collaborate after hearing me perform, the people who recognized me first and foremost as “the violinist“ and were surprised to hear that I have a life and interests outside of music, who affirmed for me that in their eyes, I was already a compelling musician. I had presented myself as a professional musician and the people around me accepted me as such and believed I was capable. I have told myself for years that I would and could never be more than an amateur, recreational violinist; this perhaps sounds like a trivial point, but this year entering an environment where I have been on more equal footing with master musicians who in turn have regarded me as accomplished and professional has been incredibly empowering.
This surely will not be the last time I bring up this point, but I thought that a full year of traveling with the intention of delving into the world of music-making would bring me clarity about what my own future and career has in store. In fact, if anything my future seems more impenetrable because of my exposure to a vast range of lifestyles and philosophies about making one's way in the world. At the same time, while I grapple with the uncertainty everyday, I think that I have more faith that if I continue to follow my passions and interests while remaining open to life's sudden and unexpected modulations that will inevitably come, things will evolve naturally and work out, even if that means settling into a new tonal center—that has been a recurring theme in this year for sure. (Refraining from the music theory puns now!) In other words, the path is winding and forbidding, but the light in the distance seems brighter than ever.
Things that (still) seem important for my future:
I want to travel
I want to write
I want to constantly be learning
I want to facilitate cross-cultural communication
I want to contribute to the global community
I want to make music (!)
In the spirit of living in the present, however...
Things have picked up in some nice ways since I returned to Istanbul. I alluded to some of this briefly last time I wrote, but I am slowly making some progress on expanding my musical network (and with it, my opportunities to study and play). I have become really good friends with Egesu, a guitarist and student at one of the music conservatories in Istanbul who took me a freestyle improvisation session a few weeks ago. It was very open-ended and a lot of fun, and there I had the chance to meet many established musicians, including his improvisation teacher, Sumru Ağıryürüyen, a renowned singer whose kindness and powerful stage presence makes up for how difficult her last name is for me to pronounce. Egesu and I have taken to attending tons of musical and cultural events, sometimes two concerts a night—everything from Dutch rock to Sumru's latest concert, freestyle improvisation inspired by 900-year-old Buddhist poetry by Ki'ki, who lived in what is now the Xinjiang region of China. We've attended all of Sumru's concerts as of late, leading us to dub ourselves her number one fans (keep in mind that this music can be quite esoteric, so we make up for sparse audiences with our enthusiasm). It has been a lot of fun to hang out with Egesu—beyond going to underground concerts featuring female Turkish pop stars, I have had so much fun (and learned a lot) talking with him about music, politics, and philosophy. Beyond that, it's a treat to have met someone with whom I can have what's known in Turkish as "deer conversation"; that is, a spoken exchange that devolves from silliness into sheer and utter nonsense. A few nights ago, we were at a canceled screening of Birdman and ended up writing our own screenplay about a man who seeks to herd cats using overtone and throat singing, exposes a cat herding fraudster, and narrowly avoids getting "spaghettified" (real quantum physics term—check it out) after a halay dance circle creates a black hole. After a certain point we abandoned the English language entirely and resorted to high pitched whistles, guttural screams, and peacock calls. (Made sense at the time.) I feel lucky to have met Egesu, not just because it was lonely showing up in Istanbul after leaving my many dear friends in Indonesia, but also just because it's so nice to have met someone who wants to go (and invites me) to the same crazy concerts as I do, who also has a healthy skepticism of and good sense of humor about authority, and with whom it seems I will never run out of topics to argue, joke, complain, and sing about.
Here's the band from last night's concert:
Besides that, I have been working regularly with Necati Çelik, an oud player and member of the Istanbul State Turkish Music Ensemble. He is a very grandfatherly sort who holds daily open office hours of sorts for his students. At any one time one will encounter a handful of students sitting and playing music together (an music-learning technique calledmeşk) while he smokes a pipe and chimes in with constructive criticism from time to time. He has been very generous and patient in teaching me about the different makams (modes) and their melodic behavior, correcting my microtonal intonation and making suggestions about ornamentation. It is a challenge to play with him, as he will present me with a new piece, which I will simultaneously sight-read, transpose, and attempt to play with the correct makam tuning and staying in the (usually complex) rhythmic meter while plays along. He does give me a hard time sometimes, criticizing the placement of my microtones ("Why are you still making the same mistakes?") or questioning my dedication ("Why haven't you learned Turkish yet?"). Nonetheless he is generally very good-natured; yesterday I successfully played a piece four consecutive times in different tuning systems, and he went so far as to mention that it seemed I was actually making some progress. In the meantime, I am still having my English-free violin lessons with Baki "the Violinist" Kemancı, who also seems to think I am making some progress—I have gotten better at inserting the proper slides and ornaments into the melodies, and so he started getting really funky with the embellishments, throwing in some rapid descending arpeggios and chromatic scales to spice up what was at its base a very plain melody. He was reaching electric guitar-solo level showiness, and it was amazing how much of a blast we were having, especially given the fact that we can't communicate using language.
Okay, I'm going to wrap it up here for now—I have to go accurately place some more microtones! More to come, as always (and I'm in the final stretch of my fellowship—a little over three weeks before I go home! Those are some bittersweet emotions I will confront...another time).
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—
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.
