Documentary looks at a legend’s trio

A new documentary by young director Okan Avcı follows Turkish music legend Erkan Oğur’s trio, Telvin, their unconventional improvisations on stage, and conversations about their free-flowing music offstage

In classical Sufism, or Tasavvuf, the word telvin means a seeker’s quest to journey from one state of being to another. And if you begin the word with a capital letter, it becomes a musical trio from Turkey whose music is inspired by the literal meaning of the word.

Erkan Oğur is a musical legend in Turkey and around the world. He is the inventor of the first fretless classical guitar and is a master of kopuz and bağlama lutes. A virtuoso at reinventing Turkish folk music, Oğur is also one of the members of the Telvin trio, along with İlkin Deniz and Turgut Alp Bekoğlu.

Much like the transcendent journey the word refers to, Telvin’s music embodies a free-flowing style, blending Turkish folk music with improvisational jazz, refusing structured performances and predefined mechanics in making music. A new documentary, available with English subtitles on DVD, brings to light the inspirations behind their music, the unconventional working dynamics of the members, and how nature is a guiding light in their work.

The documentary Telvin is at once an unconventional tour video and an inspirational tribute by a devoted fan. The young director is Okan Avcı, familiar to some thanks to his roles in TV series (Leyla ile Mecnun) and movies (Nefes – Breath), and to others with his award-winning documentary of 2011, Kadim (Venerable).

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Neşet Ertaş, 'Plectrum of the Steppe' passes away

An inspiration to generations of musicians and music-lovers thanks to his fresh take on the centuries-old Anatolian musical tradition, Turkish folk master Neşet Ertaş loses his battle with cancer

The message welcoming visitors to the official website of legendary folk singer and poet Neşet Ertaş seems even more heartbreaking today. “Dear beloved fans,” reads the message, originally from his Twitter account dating Sept. 18. “Rumors of my passing have been circulating once again. These rumors are making me very upset.”

Sadly, the rumors are now no longer rumors. Fans and lovers of Ertaş’s music woke yesterday morning to the sad news that he had lost his battle with cancer. He had been in the intensive care unit of a hospital in İzmir for the last two weeks. Ertaş was 74.

Ertaş’s inviting voice, accompanied by the strings of his bağlama, had made him a modern-day “aşık,” the traveling bard of Anatolian Alevi tradition of centuries, a historic image personifying Anatolian folk music.

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Remembering the ‘Sun of Art’

On the 16th anniversary of his death, Zeki Müren continues to stand tall as a legendary figure in pop culture. A career of over 200 records, films, concerts, spanning over 45 years, is only the tip of the phenomenon

It’s been 16 years today since Zeki Müren, Turkey’s “Sun of Art” and the “Paşa of pop culture,” died in İzmir at the TRT studios, the very institution that had kick-started his musical career half a century earlier.

Müren might just be the most interesting figure modern Turkey has seen in its short history. He was a singer, a songwriter, a composer, a published poet, a performer, an actor, a designer and an illustrator. He was also a visionary, an innovator and a revolutionary. Whatever Müren was, he sure was always larger than the sum of his parts.

Müren’s career in music began in 1951, when he recorded his first album and began performing on the state radio station Istanbul Radyosu. In 1955, he became the first Turkish singer to win a Gold Disc for a record that included the famous song Manolya. Having been chosen as Artist of the Year for many years, Müren made over 200 records and composed over 100 songs in the 45 years of his artistic career. His acting career began around the same time, with his debut feature of 1953, Beklenen Şarkı (Anticipated Song), starring opposite the legendary actress Cahide Sonku, becoming an instant success, and opening the way for a movie career of 18 films, Müren writing the score for some of them as well.

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Book links identities to pop music

Turkey’s conflicting dynamics between state ideology and pop culture are analyzed in a book titled ‘The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music,’ written by music scholar Martin Stokes. The book is now in Turkish

The way to explore a nation’s identity is through a country’s music, its singers and the intimate connection they establish with their fans, advocates Martin Stokes, a lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Oxford University and the writer of The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music.

Stokes is a renowned academic studying music and music theory with a particular emphasis on contemporary Middle East. He is no stranger to examining Turkish music as his first book The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey was published in early 1990s.

Stokes’ second book, The Republic of Love has recently been translated into Turkish by Koç University Press. The book dissects Turkey’s recent history and its conflicting national identities through three musicians. Zeki Müren, the flamboyant singer who single-handedly normalized the concept of queer in Turkish culture, Orhan Gencebay, the father of arabesk music, and Sezen Aksu, the diva and queen of Turkish pop music, stand at the core of Stokes’ book. Through these public figures, Stokes visits Turkey’s history from the 1950s to today, and questions alternative conceptions of Turkishness as opposed to identities imposed by state ideologies. The music and public personae of these three figures help shine a light on the history of Turkish politics, a constant source of civil unrest. Stokes looks at music and pop culture in general as a major player in cultural change and as a reflection on turmoil.

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