Française | English

Dur­ing a short trip by car yes­ter­day, I lis­tened to a playlist of Turk­ish music and was sur­prised to find myself sud­den­ly address­ing you in my mind… So upon my return, here I am before the keyboard.

My ex-com­pan­ion the musi­cian, who is more inclined to nav­i­gat­ing in clas­si­cal music and jazz and who is not frankly enam­ored of Turk­ish music as I am, once said to me with a chuck­le, “it’s fun­ny, Turk­ish songs often begin with grandiose airs as if incred­i­ble things would fol­low…” This per­ti­nent com­ment fell like a cap­tion before the image my friend Val drew before my eyes, “these Turk­ish singers… I look at the clips, and there they are, fill­ing the screen, heav­i­ly made up like god­dess­es, with vague eyes, fleshy lips, wind­blown hair, wrapped in flow­ing gowns, even in a stu­dio! I don’t know, I guess they must have huge ventilators…”

Those words came back to me when my small car was inun­dat­ed dur­ing the ran­dom playlist by the intro to the song “Unuta­mazsın”, “You can­not for­get” in Eng­lish, sung by Bülent Ersoy. And yet, I’m angry at the woman, a fig­ure in Turkey with her extrav­a­gance, her his­to­ry, her sex­u­al reas­sign­ment. She could­n’t care less about the trans cause, and quite the oppo­site, does not hes­i­tate in sit­ting at pres­i­den­tial din­ners and being pho­tographed with the reis. Her excep­tion­al voice stays in my ears nonethe­less, unas­sail­able. Even against my bet­ter judg­ment, I still lis­ten to this Turk­ish music.

I’m shar­ing this song with you, along with a trans­lat­ed excerpt and its  “grandiose” intro…

When darkness falls on your street
I am in the corner, you cannot forget,
Those happy days bring back to your memory
Your entire life, you cannot forget.
(Refrain)
Let’s say you tore up the letters, you threw them away,
Let’s say you tore up the photos, you burned them,
A past exists, how to erase it?
Your entire life you cannot forget.

One finds this tra­di­tion of intro­duc­tions in dif­fer­ent styles of music, but even with my begin­ner’s knowl­edge, I think it most­ly occurs in Ori­en­tal music. In fact, those sec­tions have a spe­cif­ic name… I sim­ply can’t remember.

I call a friend to the res­cue to refresh my mem­o­ry (Thanks, Titi). The tra­di­tion of “Tak­sim”, for exam­ple, a solo instru­men­tal impro­vi­sa­tion, as a pre­lude to the song, is a com­mon fea­ture in Per­sian, Ara­bic and Turk­ish music…This intro­duc­tion is known asPeşrev when it is com­posed for an orchestra.

As for Ana­to­lian rock in the 70s,  the “psy­che­del­ic peri­od”, the songs were often pre­ced­ed by long intros. The lit­tle girl I was then, ready to sing along with the singers at the top of my lungs, lis­tened to those pre­ludes in a qua­si reli­gious way. As a con­se­quence, not only the words became imprint­ed in my mem­o­ry, but I can also whis­tle entire intros to this day, almost to a sin­gle note… And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

 But here with Bülent, we have that dra­mat­ic touch that kills death! Genius.

 Ran­dom­ly, my playlist then serves up the fol­low­ing, as if fol­low­ing in the tracks of my thoughts: Zeki Müren, anoth­er fig­ure, anoth­er story… 


Read also (in French):
Esquisse n°63 — Zeki Müren, le paradoxe (1) and Esquisse n° 64 — Zeki Müren, le paradoxe (2) on Susam Sokak.
Et “Kâtibim”, globe-trotter amoureux on Kedistan.

 

Sana muh­tacım”, lit­er­al­ly, “I am in neces­si­ty of you”, bet­ter trans­lat­ed sim­ply as “I need you”.  An entire oth­er poem, to say the least… I let you lis­ten and draw your atten­tion to the moment at 3:35 min­utes, just before the end, when Zeki speaks the words of the song, in trag­ic poet­ry style…

Don’t leave, I need you.
You are the light in my eyes, the crown on my head, I need you
Kill me first, and leave after
In order to live, I need your love.
(Refrain)
I need your eyes
I need your words
I hold out my hands
I need your hands, don’t leave.

We’ll talk about it some more, after you’ve listened?

 

Recit­ing poet­ry is quite an art form…You know not every­one is gift­ed that way and it even hap­pens that leg­endary poets, attempt­ing a read­ing, mas­sacre their own poet­ry… Zeki Müren has many record­ings where he speaks the text. Each time, he over­does it in such an awk­ward way that it makes us smile. But there you are, those solil­o­quies, mixed with sighs and flow­ing phoney tears are part of his kit­shy style. We like our Zeki, he’s touch­ing, so we put up with the whole thing…

My trip was short, I had time for a third title. My play­ful playlist draws up  a most per­ti­nent choice… Anoth­er sub­lime voice… That of Muazzez Abacı singing a song with a cult sta­tus in Turkey: “Vur­gun”.

The orig­i­nal mean­ing of “Vur­gun” is that of a decom­pres­sion acci­dent occur­ring after a deep sea dive, for exam­ple. Is love not a deep immer­sion? Noth­ing sur­pris­ing if this term derived from “vur­mak” mean­ing “to strike” is used in a sec­ond mean­ing as “falling in love” (“coup de foudre”light­ning strike in French). Muazzez Abacı takes off in the mid­dle of the song (02:55) with a read­ing pro­vid­ing a change of direc­tion to the sec­ond part of the words…

Not an easy trans­la­tion, but I will do my best…

Don’t think that my eyes have made peace with slumber
Since you have gone they seem to sulk
So do I, there was a time when I was loved but
Yours truly struck me like falling in love
(Refrain)
No matter how much you make me suffer, I do not curse you
Laugh in both worlds until sated.
Hell with you is a prize for me
Without you, even paradise feels like an exile.

I’ve reached my des­ti­na­tion, but I don’t turn off the con­tact. Nev­er, ever cut off a song any old way! Let the artist express him­self or her­self to the end, or, in an emer­gency, low­er the sound to end the lis­ten­ing ses­sion in a gen­tle fade-out. Well yes, to each  their own quirks. So I wait respect­ful­ly for a few more min­utes for the last notes of “Vur­gun” to fill my thoughts. End of the trip.

Here is a live ver­sion of Turk­ish music which I sus­pect to be from the 80s giv­en the shoul­der pads and the hair­style… Along with all the faulty syn­chro­niza­tion on a mag­i­cal play­back that turns the “read­ing” sequences even weirder…


Head­line illus­tra­tion: The only pho­to extant show­ing all three artists togeth­er, Zeki Müren, Bülent Ersoy, Muazzez Abacı, cap­tured in 1980 at  singer Nigar Uluer­er’s birthday.

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
You may use and share Kedistan’s articles and translations, specifying the source and adding a link in order to respect the writer(s) and translator(s) work. Thank you.
Naz Oke on EmailNaz Oke on FacebookNaz Oke on Youtube
Naz Oke
REDACTION | Journaliste 
Chat de gout­tière sans fron­tières. Jour­nal­isme à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mar­mara. Archi­tec­ture à l’U­ni­ver­sité de Mimar Sinan, Istanbul.