On An Overgrown Path

My current reading includes the newly-published The Turkish Psychedelic Music Explosion: Anadolu Psych 1965-1980 by Daniel Spicer . This is thought-provoking, as is the declaration of intent from its publisher: Repeater Books is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that wish to enter history and assert control over its currents, gathering together scattered and isolated voices with those who have already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. Our desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed where messianic abstraction and quiescent co-option have stalled: abstention is not an option: we are alive and we don’t agree. Repeater Books is a new imprint of Watkins Media , a collective of...

Others boast of 1.5 million chimerical readers , but my approach to blogging is influenced rather more by radio presenter and writer Libby Purves' credo that "You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile". Communication is not measured in metrics, it is measured in strength of connection and ability to inspire change. Connections work both ways, and I am writing this post because the new album featured above has swayed and inspired me. Cyprus is stereotyped with an image of all inclusive resorts and English pubs . But the picture beneath the tourist veneer is very different. Like that other large Mediterranean island Crete , Cyprus lies on a cultural fault line. Just 60 miles of sea separates the island from the Syrian coast and Limassol, Cyprus' second largest city, is just 255 miles from Aleppo; so the soundtrack for the sun lounge lizards in the tourist hone...

An inevitable consequence of classical music's social media obsession is that the big get bigger and the rest get smaller. This is due to the accelerator effect of Twitter 're-tweets' and Facebook 'likes'. Once a topic reaches the social media tipping point it is liked and re-tweeted exponentially, while anything that fails to reach that crucial tipping point is buried beneath the wisdom of crowds. Such as ECM's CD of Armenian composer Tigran Mansurian's Requiem . This important new work commemorates the estimated 1.2 million victims of the Armenian Genocide which took place in Turkey in 1915-16, and it speaks profoundly and movingly of the need for humanitarian ideals and unity between nations and cultures - the very subjects that celebrity musicians put centre stage at recent Proms . But with just a few exceptions - take a bow Sequenza21 - this new release was greeted with a crouching ovation on social media and a total absence of 'Tigran Mansuri...

These art works are by the prolific musician and artist Mercan Dede . I first came across his work when I was in Istanbul years ago , and his ambient take on Sufi music featured in my Sounds of Sufism programme on Future Radio in 2010. Born in Istanbul and now resident in Canada, Mercan Dede's music integrates traditional Turkish instruments such as the ney and bendir with electronica to create a mix targeted at young dance club audiences . Sufism's liberal tendencies mean it is marginalised and sometimes persecuted by orthodox Islam, and Mercan Dede - aka DJ Arkin Allen - is in turn frowned on in traditional Sufi circles for, ironically, creatively implementing the Sufi doctrine of not going with the flow, but making the flow. As can be seen in the three examples, Mercan Dede's art works embrace syncretic themes; a selection of his art and music is on his personal website . Mercan Dede is actively helping make the flow: a portion of the proceeds from sales of hi...

Visiting the ECM website is rather like attending a Salvation Army service. You know there are worthy and wonderful things happening. But there is also a feeling of stasis. Take for instance this description of a new release : Moroccan-born singer Amina Alaoui presents her own border-transcending project. When Alaoui sings there is “no need to discuss the origins of fado, flamenco or Al Andalusi” for the music itself explores the common crucible of the styles, and Amina’s delivery makes the interconnections impossible to miss. The third question asked by Bálint András Varga in his invaluable book Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers is "How far can one speak of a personal style and where does self-repetition begin?" Now I will be the first to acknowledge that in the past On An Overgrown Path has featured more than its fair share of border-transcending projects . But that it not going to stop me saying that in world music, which Philip Glass famously described as the n...

Classical music is a linear artform. This is expressed in the traditional sonata form of exposition, development and recapitulation. Contemporary Western culture is increasingly dominated by the hypertext based web which has a non-linear structure: this non-linearity is evidenced by Twitter, Facebook, and the iPod shuffle. Which may explain the uncomfortable fit between classical music and contemporary culture . There are thought-provoking parallels between the non-linear nature of web based communications and Islamic culture. Muslim spirituality is a decentred space which has its roots in the Qur'an as the French ethnomusicologist Jean During explains: The "chapters", or sūrahs, are not thematic units, nor do they follow any chronology... Thus, the Qur'an appears as multiplex , yet this very multiplicity leads to unity , the key principle in Muslim philosophy. Islam rejects all mediations between God and man. This manifests itself in many ways including the absence...

Mythical resting place of Noah's ark, frontier post between East and West, witness of genocide, Mount Ararat certainly radiates a powerful aura. Many musicians have experienced the aura, including Tigran Mansurian, Djivan Gasparyan and Alan Hovhaness with their laments for Armenia, the Armenian Church with its Divine Liturgy , and Benjamin Britten and Igor Stravinsky with their evocations of the Flood. Dutch author Frank Westerman too fell under the spell of Ararat and his obsession is chronicled in Ararat - In Search of the Mythical Mountain , an absorbing mix of memoir, meditation, history and travelogue. Reader reviews on Amazon are sometimes entertaining but rarely informative. The only review for Frank Westerman's meticulously researched and elegantly written book, which ranges from intelligent design through personal belief to the first genocide of the twentieth century, describes it as " Interesting, but a little anti-climactic ." Quite so. * Soundtrack -...

Can you tell the state of a nation by the quality of its bookshops? My question is prompted by a recent visit to France where, once again, I was astounded by the range and quality of books on display in the country's bookshops. It wasn't just in the university city of Nantes , it was also in provincial towns such as La Roche sur Yon where the independent Mediastore carried a range of books and music that not only put to shame Britain's retailers but also proved irresistible. So from a major display of books commemorating 1968 I splurged on Les années 68 which provides a world view on that extraordinary year. An equally impressive music range yielded, among other CDs, Taksim Trio , a new release from the Turkish label Doublemoon which has featured here before. The trio of Hüsnü Senlendirici on clarinet, Ismail Tunçbilek on baglama and Aytaç Dogan on quanun dance between traditional, arabesque, jazz and classical styles in an album that is categorised as world music but...

Robert Fisk writes in today's Independent ~ "There is nothing so infinitely sad - so pitiful and yet so courageous - as a people who yearn to return to a land for ever denied them; the Poles to Brest Litovsk, the Germans to Silesia, the Palestinians to that part of Palestine that is now Israel. When a people claim to have settled again in their ancestral lands - the Israelis, for example, at the cost of "cleansing" 750,000 Arabs who had perfectly legitimate rights to their homes - the world becomes misty eyed. But could any nation be more miserably bereft than one which sees, each day, the towering symbol of its own land in the hands of another? Mount Ararat (photo above) will never return to Armenia - not to the rump state which the Soviets created in 1920 after the Turkish genocide of one and a half million Armenians - and its presence to the west of the capital, Yerevan , is a desperate, awful, permanent reminder of wrongs unrighted, of atrocities unacknowled...

Excellent article by Jon Lusk in today's Guardian about contemporary Turkish music. The World London festival this weekend showcases music from Turkey. Featured artists include Ayse Tutuncu , Goksel Baktagir , Sabahat Akkiraz , and Muslum Gurses , and all those links will take you to YouTube videos. The World London festival coincides with the tense Turkish general election on Sunday (July 22). There are many Overgrown Path readers in Turkey, and we wish that country a safe, and democratic, election. My two photos are of polychrome underglaze Yznik tiles in the Mosque of Rüstem Paşa in Istanbul, which we visited earlier this year. You will find more about Turkey by following this path . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

George Bush receives a hero's welcome in Albania , so here is a reflection on that fascinating country. ‘Albania was also for centuries an important centre for Suf’ism, Islamic mysticism, and when Kemal Atatürk closed the Sufi centres in Turkey, the headquarters of the Sufi Bektashi movement moved to Albania. The Bektashis , as part of Islam’s heterodox tradition, incorporated many of the traditions of pre-Islamic central Asia in their rituals. By their wanderings and easy-going emphasis on spirituality – in contrast to Arab formalism – they played an important role in the spread of Islam through the Ottoman Empire . They emphasised spiritual communion with God through prayer and meditation, rather than the importance of orthodox Islamic ritual. Women are admitted to the tekke (prayer house) without a veil and are recognised as having equal rights to men. A Bektashi meeting might include a meal where a sheep will be slaughtered, and washed down with wine – forbidden for Muslims ...

'I want an integrated Europe, in other words, a Europe that has borders ... Turkey is in Asia Minor' ~ Nicolas Sarkozy , French President-elect. 'The selection panel for the 2010 European Capital of Culture have recommended that the German town Essen and the Hungarian city of Pécs should share this title together with a third one, Turkey's Istanbul' ~ UNESCO World Heritage website

In March we were in Turkey and were held spellbound by the country’s unique cultural and religious mix. But in recent weeks we have watched with increasing alarm as the country’s religious and secular factions have moved on a collision force, culminating in this week's massive demonstrations in Istanbul. Taksim Square is the political nerve centre of Istanbul. Today's violent May Day demonstration took place there, and I took the photo below of a small demonstration in the square in March. Taksim is the Turkish word for division, and was the rallying cry of Turkish Cypriots who supported the partition of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek enclaves. As I write Turkey is under threat of a military coup, and, in a frightening reminder that tyranny is never far away in the Balkans, it was an abortive coup in Cyprus in 1974 that ended the military dictatorship in neighbouring Greece. If anyone needs reminding of the political and cultural horrors that accompany Balkan military coups ...

I have written several articles recently praising contemporary Turkey. Today's Guardian reports on the flipside: "Five Turkish punk rockers and their agent face up to 18 months in jail for insult after a bureaucrat took offence at their song criticising the country's unpopular university entrance exam. The head of Turkey's central examination board, OSYM, Unal Yarimagan reportedly smiled when he first saw a clip of OSYM, Kiss My Arse by Deli (mad), a group from the western city of Bursa. "I'm a tolerant person, but that didn't stop me doing my duty and checking it wasn't breaking any laws," he said. Last month, an Ankara prosecutor said it was, and a court case is due to begin on May 2. "It's ridiculous," says the lead singer and lyricist, Cengiz Sari, 24. "I was 17 when I wrote that song. I was just your typical rebellious teenager." Sensitivity to criticism is a common trait of Turkey's great and good. Since Mar...

This photo essay portrays a double miracle. Not only are the Byzantine mosaics and frescoes in the Chora Church in Istanbul truly miraculous, but their survival through the city’s tempestuous history is a second miracle. The Church of St Saviour in Chora is today known as the Kariye Camii (Mosque) Museum. Originally part of a monastery dating from the early 5th century, the church takes its name from the Greek word ‘chora’ , meaning land outside a city, although the church has long since been swallowed up by the sprawl of urban Istanbul. The church was rebuilt three times between the 6th and 12th centuries, with two of these reconstructions following earthquake damage. It was then ransacked, but not destroyed, during the Fourth Crusade in the 13th century, when forces from the western Christian churches pillaged Orthodox Constantinople. The miraculous transformation of the Chora Church came in the years following the defeat of the Crusaders and the return of Constantinople to Byzanti...

No two modes of architecture could be more different from one another than the Muslim and the West Christian. West Christian architecture in its early phase is filled with the craving for weight and massiveness; and in its second phase, the Gothic, in that for a spectacular liberation from that weight in a skyward ascent ... Moslem architecture is quite the opposite. A mosque is to be a court, a square, a market-place, lightly built to hold a large concourse of people. Allah is so great that nothing human can vie with Him in strength or endurance ... Even the Moslem castles, large though they are, give the effect of being light and insubstantial. But a Mosque is also a place for the contemplation of the Oneness of Allah. How can this better be done than by giving the eyes a maze of geometric patterns to brood over? The state aimed at is a sort of semi-trance. ( Pliable - See my reference to the Mevelevi Order below ). The mind contemplates the patterns, knows that they can be unravelle...