december-2009

FUSION MUSIC | ISTANBUL
offers a crash course in I ˙ stanbul’s
contemporary music scene and a chance
for a really fun night out, and as one
element in a symbiotic business model, it’s
also a growing success.
“The Turkish music scene is mainly
dominated by Turkish pop and folk,” says
Ahmet. “After 10 years, I can easily say
that although Doublemoon is still a bit
niche, audiences have grown a lot and they
are no longer strangers to the music and
instruments of the West. In the 1970s and
80s, people looked down on Turkish music,
but now people like Turkish music and
what it has to offer.”
Previously known as Byzantium and
Constantinople, I ˙ stanbul is the original
melting pot, home to ethnic Turkish,
Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Jewish
and even Roma communities. But
70 | TRAVELLER | DECEMBER 09
“IN ISTANBUL PROGRESS HAPPENS
BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITIES
FOR FRICTION BETWEEN CULTURES”
cosmopolitanism isn’t without its troubles
and even in recent history, musicians have
been caught in the crossfi re.
In 1991 I ˙ stanbul resident Hasan Saltik
founded the record label Kalan Müzik
dedicated to preserving and publishing
music by Turkey’s minority groups. By
1992 he was in court, where he narrowly
escaped a jail sentence for releasing the
album A Hopeful Spring in Kurdish, just
one of the minority languages then banned
by the Turkish government. Thanks in part
to a decade of Saltik’s efforts those laws
were eventually overturned, and today,
government offi cials proudly distribute
Saltik’s CDs to visiting dignitaries.
Writing from his home on the
Bosphorus, Mercan Dede, one of Turkey’s
most successful fusion-musicians refl ects:
“The democratisation process [here] has
been very successful. Over the last 10 years
many important steps have been taken
to create a much more free, democratic
and tolerant society. Also there is a new
wave of understanding of our own roots
connecting to a new identity.”