gigs with Kervan, SF @ Berkeley

Just wanted to let Turkish music fans know about 2 upcoming shows I'm playing in. I'm contributing `ud and vocals to the group Kervan, a 5-piece group specializing in Istanbul music of many varieties, from Istanbul folk songs, to sarki, to light classical instrumental pieces.

Fronting Kervan is Haluk Kecelioglu on vocals and violin, myself (ud), with Ahmet Cagri on kanun (and occasional vocals), Sean Tergis on various percussive things, and Sam "Blood Eagle" on percussion (Sam normally is seen to the public through his excellent metal band Saros but also has a passion for Turkish and Arabic percussion).

We played a Turkish party on Treasure Island in April and rocked the house - I'm not talking metaphorically, the floor nearly collapsed in Ahmet's apartment building! Now THAT's a party! We're bringing our dance-inspiring enthusiasm to San Francisco and Berkeley with 2 upcoming shows and would love to see you there - it'll be your last chance to see Kervan before the fall, as most of Kervan is Turkey-bound for the summer.

11 May 2008, 06:00 PM
Pena Pachamama
1630 Powell Street
san francisco, California 94133
$10

22 May 2008, 07:30 PM
Hillside Club: 2286 Cedar
berkeley, California 94709
A split-bill with Babes in Woods. $10-20 sliding scale

See you there! Hadi görüsürüz!

they call this spring break...

...and I'm certain about the spring part, but the "break" bit postfixed to the expression is continuously called into question due to the nature of the dissertation beast. I've attached a picture of my dissertation in progress. It's an "artist's rendering." You can see where the artist took liberties with the original, if you know where to carefully look.

show @ amnesia

I could post this under events, but I'd like to talk a bit more in a blog-format way about what we're going to be doing and why it's important.

As many of you know, about one year ago Samuel Atchley and myself started working intensively on creating an adaptation of Turkish folk music for oud and clarinet that would keep the feeling, makam, ornamentation, meaning, rhythm, and vibe intact. Much of this music is better known and typically played on baglama-saz, kaval, and zurna, so adapting it tastefully for oud and clarinet was a considerable challenge. In October 2006, Sean Tergis joined us on percussion, and we alternated 3 hour performances at Viktoria Lokantasi (in Taksim, Istnabul) with intense rehearsals. Ladi Dell'aira (singing) joined us in the spring, and we've been playing together, trying to bring a myriad assortment of regional Turkish folk music, Roman gypsy dance repertoire, Anatolian ethnic music works, and contemporary compositions to a broad audience.

The group is called Nerelisin, we've performed in California at the Kosmos camp (Lake County) and at the Monterrey Turkish Arts and Culture Festival, and a whole bunch more in Istanbul at unpronounceable venues such as the "U-Turn Bar" and "Jazz Play Studio."

We have a short time left as a group.

Our clarinetist, Sam, is moving back to Turkey at the end of September.

We're playing Amnesia (San Francisco: Valencia @20th) this Sunday at 9 where we're opening for the Brass Menazeri. Come, or forever miss a historic occasion.

But, we'd like to do a gig or two in addition before Sam runs off to reunite with his love in Istanbul (and whatever else he's searching for that Istanbul has). If anyone has any concrete leads, we'd appreciate them. We've had strange response from the venues we knew in the Bay Area. We don't want strangeness. We want a gig where the venue wants us, and an audience who appreciates a variety of Anatolian/Turkish folk music can come, o kadar.

We have some CDs to peddle, as well. Our debut 9-song CD, entitled "Fark Etmez!" (It does't matter) is finished, and released on miq productions.

Anyway, help would be appreciated. We do shows including rocking social dance pieces and/or melancholic ballads. So we're purrfect for any dance-friendly gothic encounter you might have on your horizon.

Sonra görüşürüz,
-eliot (nerelisin)

Minja (Mirjana) Lausevic, 1966-2007

I posted this in the ethnomusicology tribe, but thought it important enough to post as a blog, too.

It's with sadness I have to report the passing of an old friend and Bosnian ethnomusicologist, Minja (Mirjana) Lausevic, who died on July 15th from an "undisclosed recurring illness." We met when I was a MA student at Wesleyan, and she was finishing her PhD and performing with the group Zabe i Babe, a Bosnian pop/rock band she directed. I went to all their shows - it was definitely the coolest music happening in central Connecticut in the mid 90s! She was also an active performer of Sacred Harp music, a style of American singing from the 1700s and 1800s that uses a shape-note notation system and is loud, strident, and quite joyful. In both genres, she was a passionate performer, and was capable of transforming a hall full of dreary and disillusioned New Englanders into a jubilant space, a skill very few performers truly have.

Obituary from the Star Tribune: www.startribune.com/466/stor...5842.html

Her scholarship has focused on two topics: music and politics in Bosnia, and Balkan musicians (native and non-native) in America. A book on the latter just came out through Oxford University Press. Other articles have appeared in edited books. I compiled a bibliography of her works... (there may be others I couldn't locate)

Laušević, Mirjana. 2007. Balkan fascination : creating an alternative music culture in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

-----. 2006. Review of "Sevdah: The Bridge that Survived," Ethnomusicology 50 (1): 176.

-----. 2003. Review of "Music, Politics, and War: Views from Croatia" by Svanibor Pettan, Ethnomusicology 50 (1): 130-1.

-----. 2000. "Some Aspects of Music and Politics in Bosnia," in Neighbours at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslavia, edited by J Halpern and D Kideckel. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

-----. 1998. Review of "Music of Southslavie Epics from the Bihac Region of Bosnia" by Stephen Erdely, Notes 55 (2): 463-4.

-----. 1998. A different village: international folk dance and Balkan music and dance in the United States. PhD Dissertation, Wesleyan University.

-----. 1996. "The Ilahiya as a Symbol of Bosnian Muslim National Identity," in Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Mark Slobin. Durham: Duke University Press.

Biography from University of Minnesota's faculty website:
Mirjana Lausevic both lived and studied her subject. Lausevic was born and raised in the multi-ethnic city of Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia. She earned her bachelor's degree in Musicology-Ethnomusicology from Sarajevo University in 1988. Much of her research since that time examined how music has helped both unite and divide ethnic groups in her native Balkans.

Lausevic earned her master's degree (in 1993) and doctorate (in 1998) in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. She published numerous articles based on her fieldwork in the towns and countryside of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and the United States.

Lausevic enjoyed performing music as well as studying it. She once led a traditional Bosnian vocal group named Yu-Etno. In New England, she sang and played keyboard with her group Zabe i Babe, which recorded the compact disc Drumovi (Bison Publishing) and was featured on public television's Exploring Worlds of Music series. She used this performing experience at the School of Music by organizing world music concerts and by exploring how to integrate the University and the community through music.

heading home

It's 2:22 AM, and sometime about 10 hours from now an aircraft will lift off taking one tired Ladi and one tired myself back to the US of A, after 2 years of foibles, friends, and frolics around Turkey.

Our first "public outing" it seems will be at the Kosmos Music and dance camp, where I'm playing with my band Nerelisin for our US debut (I've always wanted to be able to say that...) on Friday night. Hope to see you there!

Months of backlog... Istanbul life...

So it's been a while since I've done the tribe blog post thingy - I've been so busy with gigs with my new band Nerelisin ( www.myspace.com/nerelisin ), which is performing a few times a week in Istanbul. We're getting a lot of press, have a bunch of regular fans, and most of all, still enjoy playing together and getting better every week.

And we're coming back, to California, this summer. June. Watch out!

Thursday nights at Victoria Lokantasi (Istanbul)

Thursday night, if you're in town, we're doing a gig at Victoria Lokantasi, located near Galatasary in the Beyoglu neighborhood of Istanbul. 9:30 PM, and there will be no sound system, which means we really don't want very many of you to come, but a few quiet people are always welcome!

This is the place I played all last year. Good meze, reasonably priced raki, great and eclectic customers. Now all we have to do is get them a new sound system...

Quote of the day:

I was hanging with some musicians today. One wanted to try out his (admittedly limited) English. He asked - "dogru soyluyorum? Anybody can love you as much as I love you."

His pronunciation was quite good. I said - "dogru soyledin... ama belki boyle bir sey soylemek istemezsin!"

Watch out American and Australian female travellers to Turkey ... the next pickup line has arrived...

Playing in Istanbul

So I've been playing a weekly gig in a restaurant in the Taksim neighborhood of Istanbul. It's a very interesting experience - playing Turkish music, for Turks, in Turkey (as opposed to playing Turkish music, for the Inuit, in Java, or other such combinations). I’m often (though not always) seen, heard, and sometimes (though not always) enjoyed as the “American who plays Turkish music.” For some of the restaurant-goers, my presence seems to register as a particularly odd experience. For others, they think I do an interesting “interpretation” of Turkish folk repertoire. And in the third camp are those who seem to genuinely like what I perform on ‘ud. Sometimes I will sing - particularly if there is a quorum of Turks there who will sing along, masking my considerable singing mistakes - but due to the varying cigarette smoke levels, I sometimes bow out of vocalizing and keep the performance more low-key (enter the pesrevs and semais - your friend for unobtrusive atmospheric performances!)

Playing in Turkey is not quite like playing in America - people here are very avid singers, some really like to dance (regardless of where they are in their meal), and some want to come up and play drum with the performers, read spontaneously-composed poetry, play a tune on the ‘ud, or even guest-sing a song. I enjoy this (mostly), as one week an excellent ‘ud player played a number of Turkish classical music songs, and we’ve had a share of very good singers.

One interesting experience, that has happened repeatedly (though not always) is that a number of people will pull up chairs in a semi-circle around me playing, and will go through my book of lyrics, pulling out songs they want to sing as a group. Sometimes they’re familiar songs, sometimes they’re songs they heard long ago but forgot some of the lyrics to. However, sometimes there will be a discussion or even argument about the veracity of the lyrics. Typically there is one or two offending words, but I’ve noticed that the number of potential alternatives is staggering, and some may dramatically change the tone or meaning of the song. I try to write down these versions when I get a discreet moment (or if I remember when I get home at 2AM), and any commentary (why it can’t possibly be such and such).

If you're in Istanbul, come by Victoria Lokantasi, located off Istiklak Cadessi 3 short blocks from Galatasary Lisesi. I play on Thursday nights from 9-12.

New oud, odd music

So I've been going once a week to Ramazan Culay's oud shop, in the Kadikoy (Asian) region of Istanbul. He's a great up-and-coming oud maker, and his shop functions as a social hub for oud players all over Istanbul. On my main blog page ( www.eliotbates.com/blog ) you can see some pictures of the oud in progress...

On Saturday night, I was invited to a music gathering held every week by the community of migrants from the central Anatolian city of Urfa. There were probably 60-70 men there (only men - no women allowed, ever, and even all the food there was prepared by men), and in the 5 1/2 hours of music performance I recognized one song (which wasn't from Urfa but Elazig). The band was great - just about everyone was a virtuoso-level singer, though all the singers had remarkably different solo singing styles, from Turkish sanat-music trained mellow voices, to arabesk-pop singers, to the very strident 140+dB falsetto-only singing style of the Aktar asiks. Geez - I have a lot of music to learn! I would love to learn some of these folk songs, and some of the thousands of hours of Alevi devotional repertoire, and of course a few hundred more saz semais and pesrevs, Sufi Ilahis, and...

I had to perform at this gathering. In California, regardless of the circumstance of the performance, I am NEVER nervous. But this evening, because there was such an air of formality and levels of distinction bestowed on every single person there, there was a huge rush of panic as I tried to eek through a rendition of "Chechen Kizi" with Eric Ederer on the cumbus. Good thing I didn't have to sing!