Forgotten folk songs find new life in Brenna MacCrimmon’s songs

Tears start to flow when we tell her there were a few folk songs we actually learned from her; she says she feels all the love, pain, joy and faith contained in much Turkish music in the deepest recesses of her heart. For this reason, she left Canada 25 years ago and came to Turkey. When she got here, she wasted no time and set to learning Turkish. And if this wasn’t enough, she took to the road, traveling throughout Thrace and the Balkans, going village to village. And so the folk songs she picked up along the way she brought back with her, and kneading them into her own language, she gave them new life.

Last week, MacCrimmon visited Turkey again. But this time she was not here for exploratory travel, but for a concert. We grabbed the chance to meet her and were able to talk of many things, like her love for this region and culture and what she feels for our folk songs.

Before we move on to that conversation, let’s provide a small background sketch for those who didn’t already know about MacCrimmon. Actually, her ties to Turkish folk music go all the way back to the 1980s. Some Ankara radio recordings she listened to some 30 years ago in an Ontario library had a deep influence on her. She explains: “When I first heard Balkan music, I really felt something different in myself. The rhythms and manner were so wonderful. The voices were beautiful. Especially those of the women… They were at the same time very strong, but also very emotional. I just wanted to keep on listening, never stopping.” After this introduction to Balkan music in the Ontario library, MacCrimmon met some Turkish musicians who were living in Canada and began to take bağlama lessons from them. She also started to look further into Turkish music in general, researching archives of music that had been long forgotten by many. In the end though, she decided it was all work that would be better done in person in Turkey, and so she left for İstanbul. She wound up living in İstanbul for five years and traveled widely through Thrace and the Balkans. She found herself uniting with not only the music but the people and the culture, too. Even though it was difficult, she also learned Turkish during this time. Move forward to present day, and MacCrimmon is a musician who has released three albums of Turkish folk songs from the Balkans.

Sewing pieces of headscarves onto outfits

One of the first things we noticed about MacCrimmon when we met her was the yellow headscarf she had wrapped around her neck, but then as we talked, we began to really pay attention to the embroidered muslin cloth on her jacket.

And so it is clear that this lover of Turkish folk songs has also adopted Turkish ways of dress; as it turns out, MacCrimmon collects old headscarves and muslin cloths and sews them into and onto her clothing. When we ask this artist what it is she misses most about Turkey when she is back in Canada, she responds: “These kinds of places, these kinds of conversations… I love how in Turkey you can go visit a friend and drink tea with them, there are other people who come and go, and so much talk. These are the daily wonders I miss. These things do exist in Canada, but not like here.” MacCrimmon adds in her fluent Turkish, “I am Canadian, but what I try and do is bring some of the beautiful things from here over there.”

MacCrimmon also had some difficult times in Turkey, since many folk song artists really prefer to sing their songs accompanied by Turkish musicians. But she says that in the end she did find some musicians who were open to new ideas and new things. She says: “Alright, so I am not Turkish, but I have a sense, and I can give back to people the things that I have felt and seen. Opera is a German art form, but today you can hear Japanese opera singers singing opera. I think music belongs to everyone. If you love it, you make it. I don’t know whether I do as well as a Turk, but I do love singing.” So who, you might wonder, are the musicians open to trying new things that played alongside MacCrimmon on her first album? The famous clarinet virtuoso Selim Sesler, who met MacCrimmon while playing with the music group Baba Zula. The two began to work together, and Sesler accompanied MacCrimmon on her 1998 album “Karşılama.” After that came MacCrimmon’s second album, and on this album, called “Ayde Mori,” there was expert accordion player Muammer Ketencoğlu, Sumru Ağıryürüyen and Cevdet Erek accompanying the Canadian singer. MacCrimmon’s third album, “Kulak Misafiri,” came out just last year, with preparations for it taking a full three years, in part because the album has 30 foreign musicians who worked on it, all of them like MacCrimmon, musicians who love Balkan music.

‘You have a Turkish soul’

“There is a women’s market in Skopje where all sorts of goods — from fabric to knick-knacks and kitchen items — are on sale,” recalls MacCrimmon. “There was a store selling these sorts of things, and I was very curious, and entered the store to look around. The owner was a Roma, but he spoke six or seven different languages. He told me ‘Come on my daughter, you also have a Turkish soul,’ and he made me sit down and said they would like to offer me some coffee. I accepted, but then I just sat and sat there for a long time, thinking perhaps they had forgotten the offer. Then finally the coffee came, and it was really the best Turkish coffee imaginable. There was a lace mat on the tray, and a glass of water and the coffee. They poured the coffee in front of me from their cezve, and from the black color of the cezve, it was clear the coffee had been cooked over a coal fire. I felt like I was drinking the last of the Ottoman coffees!”