Category: Culture/Art

Turkish Musician To Give Concert In New York Mills

Turkish Mystic Sufi musician Latif Bolat will present music, poetry, Sufi mystic stories and images from the ancient land of Turkey at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 18. Tickets are $12 advance sale and $15 at the door. Student tickets are $5 anytime.

Turkish Mystic Sufi musician Latif Bolat will present music, poetry, Sufi mystic stories and images from the ancient land of Turkey at the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 18. Tickets are $12 advance sale and $15 at the door. Student tickets are $5 anytime.

Bolat plays Turkish folk music and devotional Sufi songs which are called Ilahi and Nefes, from the Anatolian peninsula. The lyrics of Ilahis or Nefeses are taken largely from the great 13th century mystical poets Rumi and Yunus Emre. The program also includes traditional Turkish folk songs as well as ballads composed by Latif Bolat. Throughout the program, devotional poetry will be recited from 13th century Sufi poets Yunus Emre and Rumi, and images of Turkish people and scenery will be reflected on a screen.

One of the most well-known Turkish musicians in the U.S., Bolat possesses a vast repertoire, ranging from Sufi devotional songs and Turkish Folk music to classical pieces. His mesmerizing performances draw on ancient texts and employ traditional instrumentation such as the baglama (long necked lute), and he is often accompanied by other Turkish traditional instruments such as oud, bendir and ney flute. Now residing in New Mexico, Bolat has presented his music all across America, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Philippines and England. In addition to the concerts and lectures, he has recorded four successful CDs, made many TV and radio appearances and composed music for the PBS Documentary “Muhammed: Legacy of a Prophet” and George Lucas’s TV series “Young Indiana Jones.” He is also the co-author of a Turkish Sufi poetry book titled “Quarreling with God” which is published by White Cloud Books (Oregon, 2008).

Date: Nov. 28

Time: 19:30

Adress: The New York Mills Regional Cultural Center

24 North Main Avenue, Box 246

New York Mills, MN 56567

www.wadenapj.com

November 15, 2010
Forgotten folk songs find new life in Brenna MacCrimmon’s songs

Brenna MacCrimmon is a Canadian musician who, when singing Turkish folk songs, has a trembling voice and exudes a sort of excitement you can read in her eyes.

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!”

November 14, 2010
Contemporary Istanbul hosts Iranian and Armenian artists

With its mission to become a fair with a regional agenda, Contemporary Istanbul focuses on the art of neighboring countries. Last year it began to do this within the framework of a program entitled New Horizons. The first country to be featured under this appellation was Syria. The selection of artists reflected the diverse trends in Syrian contemporary art with the latter two, Ahmad Moualla and Sara Shamma, standing out as internationally recognized artists.

This year the focus is on Iranian art. Exhibited in five different booths, the selection again will illustrate the richness and diversity of the works of these renowned artists. Parallel to its emerging cinematographic successes in the last few years, Iranian artists working with a vast array of media have begun to attract the attention of global art lovers. A case in point is that of the five booths in the fair featuring Iranian art – three are from the U.K. and Germany. Beginning with the widely acclaimed Shirin Neshat, the artists featured in the fair are Afsoon, Ali Adjalli, Jamshid Bayrami, Simeen Farhat, Mahmoud Kalar, Ali Rahbar, Mehdi Saeedi, Zolaykha Sherzad, Maliheh Afnan, Ayman Baalbaki, Fathi Hassan and Susan Hefuna. Viewing the resulting kaleidoscope of the works of these artists will certainly be an awesome experience for all art lovers.

Looking at this lively art from Iran, a country that is host to one of the oldest civilizations in the world, one cannot but ponder the recent history of this country and how art has flourished in that context. It is a fact beyond doubt that during the reign of the late shah an elite, even if of a limited size, began to collect artwork of world masters as well. This trend of collecting was further spurred by the establishment of a state collection of world modern art under the guidance of the empress.

Today Iranian art is flourishing both in the country as well as in the post-revolution diaspora. What is remarkable in these works is the subtleness of how the artists come to terms with the various dichotomies of style and content such as those related to contextualism and traditionalism versus the new and universal.

Another country that the fair will turn its attention to this year is Armenia, a country so close yet so far away. Once again art will become a conduit for rapprochement. The works of contemporary artists such as Armen Gevorgyan, Karen Aghamyan, Tigran Kirakosyan and Feliks Eghiazaryan will be featured in a booth specifically allocated for these artists.

The surprises in this year’s edition are not limited to these remarkable sections; don’t miss the other novelties.

The fair starts Nov. 25 at the Istanbul Convention and Exhibition Center (Lütfi Kırdar) Rumeli Hall.

via OPINION: Contemporary Istanbul hosts Iranian and Armenian artists – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

November 14, 2010
What Happened in the Istanbul Gallery Attack?

By Kate Deimling

ISTANBUL— It’s been over seven weeks now since a night of gallery openings in Istanbul’s Tophane neighborhood erupted into violence. The area features mosques, churches, synagogues, and various small businesses, mostly run by poor Muslim immigrants from the country’s rural eastern region of Anatolia. Since 2008, a number of galleries have moved in bringing with them secular values, risqué imagery, and alcohol-infused opening nights. Until the Tophane Art Walk on September 21, however, the old guard and the newcomers seemed to coexist in wary peacefulness. To better understand what happened that night, ARTINFO took a look at the range of news articles and blog posts examining the violent mob’s motivations, and the ramifications of the incident.

To recap what happened: gallery-goers loitering on the sidewalk with plastic cups of wine were attacked by a mob of 30 to 50 men wielding knives, batons, broken bottles, pepper spray, and frozen oranges. The attack began in front of Outlet Gallery and then spread to Galeri NON and Elipsis. There were a number of injuries, and approximately a hundred people found shelter inside galleries — one located safely on the third floor and another behind metal security gates. The police arrested a handful of people but later released them, citing the victims’ inability to identify their attackers.

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Initial reports raised the question of whether the unrest could have been caused by a sculpture in the window of Galeri NON depicting founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as a fallen angel. But an Istanbul blogger who visited the area three weeks after the incident and wrote a lengthy account of his encounters with locals could not find anyone who objected to the depiction of Atatürk (who, moreover, as a staunch secularist, is not especially beloved by the conservative Muslims of Tophane).

Many reports point to alcohol consumption in the galleries as a hot-button issue. Comments posted on a neighborhood Web site in the weeks leading up to the riot objected to drinking at various nearby establishments and urged the community to do something about it. A blogger who witnessed the attack firsthand described ducking down an alley with a friend to escape a mob of more than 20 young men and receiving this warning from a local resident: “There were people out drinking. That’s not accepted in this neighborhood. They’re going to come back. It will happen again. You should leave.” An officer at the local police station told the New York Times that one gallerist’s landlord had warned her to keep her visitors’ alcohol consumption indoors, but that people took their drinks with them anyway when they went outside to smoke. “Going outside with their drinks — that’s how the problem started,” the anonymous officer added.

Many assert, however, that the attack was clearly premeditated, and one blogger on Turkish politics and culture fretted that all the discussions of gentrification and religious intolerance would obscure the necessity of dealing with the organized violence. According to an AP report, this kind of attack “recalled a dark world of impunity and vigilante justice that hindered Turkey’s modern development, and that the nation’s leaders have sought to consign to the past.” Meanwhile, Turkish government officials have downplayed the attack’s significance, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stating that such incidents occur everywhere.

Typical gentrification issues have indeed been widely reported as having spurred the assailants on. During his tour of Tophane, the aforementioned Istanbul blogger encountered concerns familiar in many neighborhoods across the United States and Europe, from Brooklyn to Berlin: rapidly rising rents, produce that costs ten times as much as before, feelings of being looked down on by newcomers.

It would no doubt be easier to evaluate the political, religious, or socioeconomic overtones of the incident if it could be determined just who perpetrated the violence. German magazine Der Spiegel reported that some local residents attributed the attacks to members of a neighborhood Islamic Group called the Brotherhood. While some have implied that the political group Alperen Ocaklari — which is affiliated with the Grand Unity Party — was involved in the assault, its head, Abdullah Gürgür, denies these accusations, according to Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman.

via What Happened in the Istanbul Gallery Attack?: A Roundup of Perspectives – ARTINFO.com.

November 12, 2010
‘Istanbul in Children’s Eyes’ in Romania, Serbia

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

The project will feature 130 pieces of artwork by children from 10 countries.

The “Istanbul in Children’s Eyes” project is set to open exhibitions in Romania and Serbia featuring more then 130 artworks about the city made by children from 10 countries.

The project depicts Istanbul through the eyes of children via art. Within the scope of this project, children living in Istanbul got together with children from neighboring countries to depict the city altogether with looks from insiders and outsiders.

The project aimed at gathering children from 10 countries for them to make art. The artworks produced by children were exhibited in four districts of Istanbul. Now they are going to be exhibited in Romania and Serbia.

Residents of those areas will actively participate in this project. Children, like in any other domain, will be producers and consumers of art in the future.

It will contribute to them immensely as they live and work together with their peers in other countries and this process will help improve dialogue with neighboring countries.

The exhibition in Romania will take place between Nov. 13 and 18 at Asociatia Artistilor Plastici Targu-Mures, and the exhibition in Serbia will be at the Children’s Cultural Center in Belgrade between Nov. 20 and 26.

Both exhibitions will feature more than 130 artworks made by children from 10 countries. There will be workshops during the exhibition in Serbia where Serbian children will make painting studies.

The project was carried out by the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency’s Visual Arts Directorate.

November 12, 2010
A Counterpoint to the Ubiquitous Turk-bashing in Germany

Cancelling clichés: Alexandra Klobouk says that if you grow up in Germany, you know next to nothing about Turkey. Now, with her book, the young graphic designer has created a counterpoint to Germany’s current debate on immigrants. A portrait by Nina Apin

A humorous book “for everyone who has no idea either”: Cover of Alexandra Klobouk’s Istanbul, mit scharfe Soße?She meant to make a real Turkish breakfast, Alexandra Klobouk apologises as soon as she opens the front door. In the kitchen of her shared flat on Berlin’s hip Kastanienallee – mix ‘n’ match furniture, cleaning rota on the wall – there are fruit and biscuits on the table. The only Turkish thing in the room is a blue glass ornament on the fridge, warding off the “evil eye”.

She didn’t have enough time, Klobouk calls over her shoulder on the way to make coffee, and time is the main ingredient for proper “menemen”. The 27-year-old graphic designer reaches for a book on the kitchen table, using one of the illustrations to show me the many variations on Turkish scrambled eggs: with chopped peppers, garlic sausage, sheep’s milk cheese, and tea on the side… Her hands skip across the pages, following the arrows, demonstrating how to make Turkish tea.

Total ignorance concerning Turkish people

A typical stereotype of Turkish culture: women who want to lead independent lives get murdered in honour killingsThe illustrations are Klobouk’s own work, the chapter on breakfast and tea culture is from her book “Istanbul, mit scharfe Soße?” (“Istanbul, with hot sauce?”) The title illustration shows a young woman riding across the Bosporus on a kebab spit. “If you grow up in Germany,” Klobouk explains the picture, “you know next to nothing about Turkey.” Kebab chefs, women in headscarves and footballers – that’s about the extent of it. The rest, she says, is secondary knowledge – media reports on “honour killings”, forced marriages and under-educated parallel societies.

The slim volume brought out by the tiny independent publishers Onkel & Onkel is the result of an irritation. Alexandra Klobouk had seen Fatih Akin’s film Crossing the Bridge, a documentary about the music scene in Istanbul. “I was really impressed. And horrified by how little the images on the screen had in common with the ones in my head,” she says. She’d always thought of herself as a cosmopolitan – “but after seeing the film, I had to admit how much the clichés of Turkish people from the German detective series had influenced my perception.”

Subtle strokes

You can still tell how shocked Klobouk was about herself, even now. She devotes the first chapter of her bilingual book to common prejudices: women in veils lugging heavy shopping bags behind their moustachio’d husbands, a concrete monstrosity by the name of “Antalya Beach Paradise” awaiting German holiday-makers. Her reduced illustrations hint at a great deal with subtle strokes, while the rest takes place inside the reader’s head.

Time is the main ingredient for a proper Turkish repast… Graphic designer and author Alexandra Klobouk moved to Istanbul for seven months, knowing nothing about the Turkish language, the country or the city itselfKlobouk grew up in Regensburg, Bavaria; her parents are artists. None of the students at her grammar school came from Turkish families. And even when Klobouk moved to Berlin seven years ago to study communication design, her contact to the city’s large ethnic Turkish population remained at a minimum: the unfriendly greengrocer on the corner, loud young men on the train. And of course the media reports.

Her eyes opened by Akin’s film, Klobouk decided to get an impression of her own, flying to Istanbul for three weeks. Her original goal was to establish an exchange programme between her art school and a Turkish university. “Looking back, my approach was probably rather naïve,” laughs Klobouk. “I didn’t speak a word of Turkish and I’d underestimated the bureaucracy.” In the end, however, she managed to exchange universities with a graphic design student in Istanbul.

Getting used to Turkish hospitality

She then spent seven months in the city. She attended Marmara University in the Asian part of Istanbul and moved in with another student, who spoke about as little English as Klobouk spoke Turkish. “I didn’t understand a thing,” says Klobouk, miming absolute helplessness, “but I got help from all over from the very first day.”

Scanning the veil: According to Alexandra Klobouk, first impressions can be deceivingKlobouk soon found herself integrated into a network of young women, all of whom studied and partied together, and celebrated long drawn-out breakfasts every Sunday in their flat. “Everyone talked and I just listened – and every quarter of an hour someone gave me a summary of the conversation.”

Thanks to this effective language-learning method, she was soon able to go shopping at the market, “and to tell a Turkish mother how wonderful her cooking was.” There were plenty of opportunities to do so. It took Klobouk a while to get used to Turkish hospitality, which forbids guests from lifting a finger. And there was more to get accustomed to: the group taxis, the street children, the bureaucracy, the ever-present police. During her stay, major terrorist attacks shook the city, the worst of them killing 17 people. The book shows a woman on an underground train pressing her backpack to her body as protection from nail bombs.

No, Alexandra Klobouk doesn’t want to live in Istanbul for good. “You see too much in seven months to be 100% enthusiastic,” is her sober comment. Klobouk talks about her best friend Duygu. Wearing short trousers was perfectly normal in her hometown of Izmir – but in Istanbul they incensed the rural population originally from Anatolia, which has been bringing conservative influences into the previously very Western city for some years now.

Self-appointed “guardians of virtue”

Not one to boast: the young graphic designer Alexandra KloboukIs Istanbul becoming a Muslim city? Klobouk shrugs: “I only got to know a very small section of Turkish society. Nobody I know wears a headscarf or goes to mosque.” Yet her female friends felt they had to justify their way of life, smuggling male visitors past self-appointed “guardians of virtue” in their buildings.

Our kitchen-table conversation is approaching Germany’s current debate on integration. Alexandra Klobouk sighs. She came across the former politician who launched the debate, Thilo Sarrazin, at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “I really ought to thank him; my book is suddenly highly topical thanks to his insulting comments on immigrants.” But she has no wish to engage with the arguments of the likes of Sarrazin and the Bavarian conservative Horst Seehofer. Klobouk, not one to boast, tells me she is a little proud to have created a counterpoint to the ubiquitous Turk-bashing in Germany right now.

Nina Apin

© Tageszeitung/Qantara.de 2010

Translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire

Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de

November 12, 2010