Sayı 11- Ocak/Mart 2013 - Antalya Rehberler Odası

M. Emin Bolat was born in Iskenderun,in 1966. He was interestedin music even at elementaryschool and he did notcontinue his education for thisreason. He made his first musicalinstrument by installingsoda bottle caps on the floursieve. As he could not find agood and high-quality musicalinstrument that was well tuningand with a good soundingrhythm; he gave up looking andbegan to make one at homefor himself. He started by makinga “tambourine”, a “bendir”,for himself, through long effort,hard earned experience andworkmanship. Over time, heincreased and developed therange of musical instrumentshe produced through makingfurther new studies.The bendir is the type of the percussioninstrument known astambourine in Classical TurkishMusic and especially employedin Mevlevi ritual music, which isspecific to the countries of theMaghreb (especially Moroccoand Algeria). The name bendir,taken from Maghreb Arabic becamewidely used in Turkey afterthe 1980s. A significant featureof the bendir, which is manufacturedby stretching a skin over acircular hoop, the hoop usuallyhaving a diameter of 40-55 cm,are the strings that are stretchedover the inner side to provideresonance to the sound. Thesame musical instrument waswidely used in medieval Europeanmusic, having the name timbreor tymbre (in French), startingfrom the 12 th century. Thereis the strong probability that theArabic name was transferredinto French. Its widespread usagehas started in recent yearsin Turkey, and it is the most usedrhythm instrument of TurkishFolk Music today, in addition toits use in the divine music of theMevlevi Sema. In addition, it canalso be found, used in Turkishrock music from time to time.Udu DramHe opened his first workshopwith the name Emin Percussionin Beyoglu, Istanbul, in 1994.He himself makes the form anddesign of all the musical instrumentswhich are made throughvery special and meticulouspractices in terms of technics,aesthetics and sound values,by hand. These very specialmusical instruments made byhand, from the mud of the KizilirmakRiver and from catfishskin, are used in the world’smajor countries, and particularlyin Turkey today.These instruments have enteredthe international market over thelast 5 to 6 years and their uniquesound appeals to 70% foreigncustomers. All are individual andhand-made and each is unique.Its weight and degree of furnacingare very important. Choosingthe right skin etc. are very importantfactors. The reasons for preferringthe skin of capricorn, goat,beef, and catfish is that theseskins are able to be tuned, theyhave the tuning feature, as theyare without scales or hair poresMehmet Körükçü & Emin Bolatand these skins are employed inall the percussion musical instrumentsof this type in the world.We end our conversation aboutthis different story giving the lastword to Mr. Bolat, and we learnthe reach of his aim,“The goblet drum is thespinal cord of music, thismusic should be promotedand ‘World of Civilization’should reverberate to thesound of rhythm,” he says.and then we depart, taking withus the sound of this particularwonderful catfish skinned musicalinstrument…