On Saturday, July 31, Bibliotheca Alexandrina welcomed the Turkish Golden Routes music festival to Alex’s fair harbors, for a sublime evening of classical Turkish music. The concert stage was set on the plaza with the audience facing the sea.
A crowd of about 200 people sat entranced as three amalgamations of Turkish, Greek and Egyptian musicians took their turn on stage. Between the library, the ocean, the breeze and the music, it was hard to believe that a completely serendipitous meeting with a group of Turkish VIPs in tourist clothes led me to one of the most beautiful concerts I’ve witnessed this year.
The featured performers, Ahenk and En Chordais, played an incredible fusion of classical Turkish music with modern musical motifs. The use of traditional classical instruments like the long-necked, half-gourded tambur, the kanun (like a zither) and the miniature violin-between-the-legs Kemençe created a sound that wasn’t altogether different from classical Egyptian music.
The powerful voice of Dilek Turkan singing slow, mournful tunes transported the audience back in time to a quality of music much more common 50 years ago, devoid of unnecessary filler.
There was no heavy drumbeat, no electric guitar. The sound was unadulterated and simple.
En Chordais played two compositions written by group members. The kanun and the oud were employed in clever fashion to produce a modern, very Turkish and traditionally referential sound.
In the second of the compositions, the oud played a throbbing and syncopated meter, making the air pulsate with this slow, driving beat while the kanun played what sounded like a complex and rich jazz improvisational solo over the rhythm.
Without deviating from all precepts of classical Turkish music, the compositions frolicked within these themes, at some parts sounding like rock music, at others, using unstructured musical forms and unusual tonal chords and modes.
Especially outstanding was the Egyptian singer and Ressala vocalist, Mostafa Saad, one of three participating Egyptian musicians including Mohamed Farag, nay player, and Ayman Mabrouk on percussion.
Coming on stage in the second half of the bill, his benevolent demeanor and warm tenor blended delectably with the vocals of the Turkish female and Greek male singers. By the end of the show, when they all joined on stage for the finale, trading verses in their own languages, Saad had the audience clapping enthusiastically, the formal bearing of the concert overcome by enthusiastic, laughing Egyptians.
The concert was the second leg of the three-part Golden Routes Festival, “In the footsteps of Piri Reis” — a traipsing around the Mediterranean, including Genoa, Athens, Naples, Palermo and Tunis, to name a few— that follows the voyages of the famous navigator of the same name.
Along with musicians, the caravan comprised a cartoonist, writer, photographers and filmmakers. The last leg of the journey will involve 15 countries in Eastern Europe. Even more ambitiously, the group is going by bus for the 26-day tour.
The objective of the Golden Routes is to initiate intercultural dialogue, spurred in part by Turkey’s bid to join the EU and by “Istanbul 2010: European Capital of Culture,” a yearlong project to squeeze in as many cultural events in and out of Istanbul and without during the period of a year.
Indeed, straddling Western and Eastern cultural histories means that Istanbul is a real breeding ground for the kind of interchange that nurtures culture.
Speaking to Özdem Petek, coordinator of the festival, I asked how two cities with similar historical roots have taken such different trajectories. While Istanbul has emerged as a major culture city, Alexandria is become a city of ghosts in the European mindset.
“Food is a good example, because while it is a major similarity, it also shows the differences [between us],” Petek said. “Hummus and tahina are remains from the Ottoman Period, and are the most important elements of Turkish food, but Turkish food today is also a mix of different cultures: Greece, Caucasus, the rest of Europe.
“Certainly Alex is a beautiful city. But for members of the group who hadn’t visited before, they were surprised. Both countries are Islamic countries; the first similarity we found between Istanbul and Alexandria is the call of the adhan (call to prayer)… We are not taught in Turkey from the Orientalist perspective. We are Islamic and empathetic. But we have different social norms, for example, seeing families sitting together at four in the morning, though this probably is because of the weather (he laughs).
“Historically, both cities in Ottoman history are port cities. But for Turkey, change came with the Republican Revolution in 1923. Ataturk affected social, cultural and educational areas of society greatly. The alphabet became Latin. We had a revolution. Also, because of this Western and Eastern history Turkey can communicate easily and collaborate with both kinds of cultures.
“That is what the concert last night was about. Music is universal and random. When instruments and voices speak in music, they can unite people.”
