Category: cabin life

Immortalised in Music

‘Blimey!’ I hear some of you exclaim. ‘I thought you’d blogged-off this mortal coil like that William Barker fellow who has ‘gone for the long rest’.’ Not just yet, mate – there’s life in the old blog yet!

A little while back (OK, OK, it was October last year) I wrote about Ali the zurna maker who intrigued and then delighted us with his enthusiasm for his craft. Well, J and I decided that we’d buy one of his beautiful creations to send as a gift to renowned saxophonist John Surman. John had seen the original post and had commented how much he appreciated craftsmen-performers like Ali who were indeed a dying breed. Some of you will know from previous postings that JS is family.

not these two – we chose one of pear wood the other I can’t recall

Anyway, in the end we bought two of Ali’s zurnas, which delighted him no end. It also delighted us because we know how much these things cost in places like Istanbul and Ali’s ‘country craftsman’ asking price was the reason we settled for two. J explained to Ali that his masterpieces were to be shipped to Norway where JS lives. A fair degree of lip-pursing and teeth-sucking ensued. ‘Well,’ exclaimed Ali, ‘hmm! I won’t be able to go there to fix up his reeds when he needs new ones.’ And he started to rummage about in his bags and tins of bits and bobs. He made up a kit of parts and spares (even down to little squares of sandpaper) that was to be sent with the zurnas. Then there followed a master class in reed making for us so that we could enclose written instruction to complete the kit.

Everything was packaged and eventually arrived, intact, with JS in Norway. To say he was delighted would be an understatement. So delighted, in fact, that he promised to write and play a piece with the zurna dedicated to Ali and all that he represents.

Below is that piece, played by John on one of Ali’s zurnas. He called it ‘A Song for Ali’s Zurna’. It is beautiful, haunting and very John Surman.

When lock-down here in Turkey is eased we’ll make sure that Ali gets copies of this and more information about who JS is and his standing in the musical world. Ali’s world is centred around a few villages up here in the mountains so I think he’s going to be amazed and delighted – how about you?

Alan, happy to be locked-down up here!

 

Posted on by Alan 6

A Dying Breed

A few days ago a mysterious car parked at the bottom of our cabin ‘drive’ and a somewhat furtive individual got out. He asked us mysterious questions about ‘a man on the beach’ all the time glancing about and gazing towards the horizon and never quite meeting our eye before he went shuffling off along the track.

J and I glanced at each other, shrugged, and carried on with our hoeing and pruning. Shortly there came the sounds of a chain saw and then this shifty individual came scurrying back clutching smallish logs of tree trunk. He called us over to his car where he recovered a log from its hiding place under a rug and proceeded to apply a tape measure to it whilst rabbiting on at pace as he continued to peer around in his shifty, furtive manner.

Eventually he sussed that we were perplexed and ferreted out a shopping bag that had half a dozen zournas in it. From here on our interest mounted and once he slowed down his garbled delivery we realised that he actually made these instruments at his home in our local village.

We explained to him that we loved the raucous sound of these primitive, double reeded, instruments. They have a sound that you can actually feel in your gut and in the hands of a master they can carry you to mysterious, wild, unimagined places.

Zournas are spread across North Africa, Eurasia and as far as China, Korea and Japan. Wherever is found the common reed (as here at Salda) you will find the zourna or a variation of it. It is the double reed that produces the powerful, gut-rumbling sound that is so evocative.

fancy modern oboe reeds

traditional Turkish zourna reed

As folk instruments they have been around for a very long time – here’s one from the museum at Persepolis that’s dated from about five thousand years BCE.

Anyway, Ali (for that was his name) began to feel more relaxed with us and became less furtive. As he was leaving he said something that sort-of translated to ‘you are invisible’! What he wanted to say was that, as cutting trees is illegal even for making zournas, that we hadn’t seen him. We, being natural-born anarchists/rebels against petty ‘jobsworths‘ and their ilk, readily agreed.

What was really nice was that this morning Ali turned up to show us what he had made  from the wood he’d garnered the day we didn’t see him. He also delivered an impromptu demo as he explained the different keys, different parts and different woods – how nice was that!

So, here he is – our mysterious and furtive visitor:

A dying breed? Yes, because traditional craftsmen like Ali, who create whatever it is they make for their own pleasure or the pleasure of other locals and not for some pseudo-authentic tourism market or to decorate the wall of some moneyed townie looking for plastic connections to a lost past, are fast fading away.

Power to your elbow Ali – if we both live long enough then I’m bequeathing my, by then, ancient fruit trees to you so that you can breathe new life into them and they can continue to rumble many a gut!

Alan in Payamlı (Almondy).

Posted on by Alan 7

Durul Bakan – Artiste Extraordinaire

Durul Bakan is indeed an extraordinary artist-sculptor. J and I first stumbled, quite literally, across his work some little while back on one of our regular trips to the Lisinia Project. Outside the barn a huge, graceful eagle was under construction from bits and bobs of Ardıç/Juniper trees. We were stunned at the power of the piece.

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Of the sculptor there was no sign but by the time we made our next visit the magnificent finished piece was in place to greet us as we drove through the entrance to the project.

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With each new visit, either by ourselves or with family or friends, astonishingly beautiful additions had been made to the menagerie. From a Eurasian Lynx to a magnificent Ibex (wild goat) to . .

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Eurasian Lynx

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Ibex

In the past couple of weeks we’ve had the pleasure of having, first, Numero Uno Daughter Anita and then dear friend Ahmet and his wife Muge for visits. The Lisinia Project is a must-do visit and so it was that on the last call-in I was delighted to find the artist Durul Bakan busy at work on a new piece. We have only ever interacted via social media so getting this chance to press the flesh and look each other in the eye was a real bonus.

The new piece was intriguing because it looked a bit like a giant horse with a mouth full of tiger’s teeth! Questions were soon being answered with the aid of technology.

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Apparently, back in seventeen hundred and something or other, a lone Frenchman was wandering about in the general area. He claimed to have seen this monstrous creature with his own eyes and drew a picture.

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The guy’s name was Paul Lucas and he wrote a lot of books in his time. Personally I think he’d been on the rakı because he described the creature as a giant ‘hyena’ and called it Datura stramonium, which was all a bit of wishful thinking because no-one had ever seen it before and no-one has seen it since. Until now that is because it is being resurrected under the hands of Durul Bey – I can tell you that J and I are really looking forward to our next visit.

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explaining the improbable

Durul then insisted on dropping everything to give our party an escorted trip around the project. Recently the project has been expanding its facilities to provide exhibition space and visitor area where healthy food, drinks and the projects wonderful organic products can be purchased to support the whole caboodle. Waiting to take pride of place are many of Durul’s latest creations. The way the pieces of wood are chosen to follow and mimic the muscle structure of each creature is uncanny – a bit of imagination (or a glass or two with lunch) could have you believing that at any moment they’ll spring into motion.

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J with deer and shark

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complete with all his accoutrements – the detail is amazing

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So, there you have just a small sample of this amazing artist and his amazing creations – a taster that I hope will encourage you to visit and support the Lisinia Project.  As for me, I’m dreaming of commissioning Durul to create something that would look great atop the cairn in our garden hide-away.

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Now that really would be something to write home about!

Alan up in the mountains.

Posted on by Alan 4