Istanbul Ramazan

Hi all

Iyi Bayramlar!
Well Ramazan has just finished.
I survived it by playing every night at one of 2 different venues (and sometimes both): an iftar tent (where people break their fast each sunset) and a shopping centre!

The iftar tent was in Avcilar, about 30 kms out of the centre of town (where I live) so I was travelling 4-5 hours every day and often with my accordion on my back in packed buses or trains or trams. The patrons on this transport , though squashed in., are amazingly polite and forebearing, considering that they’ve been working all day and haven’t eaten or drunk anything since 5am.
Incidentally at 4am Ive been hearing a drummer walk down my street banging his big davul (drum) , waking people up to eat before sunrise.

Anyway when I arrive in Avcilar we wait for sunset and when the imam (or our singer) calls to prayer, we eat with the masses. These tents are sponsored by the Islamic government (and the party was doing so before it came to office, which helped them win the election). The food is reasonable but very hard to find vegetarian this month. Not a bean to be seen. It seems that fasting people love their meat at night.

Later on we play a set of music. Either tasavuf (sufi ) music ,with or without a semazen (whirler) or we play sanat songs (classical Turkish songs in different makams or scales). My repertoire of both sorts has vastly increased this month. Our group usually consists of a violinist, an oud player/singer; a sufi singer/percussionist; and myself on accordion /ney and singing the occasional Balkan or Russian song.

My other venue was a shopping centre, not quite as far out from Taksim, looking like a stereotypical shopping plaza.
Our costumes were ah…. interesting , wearing Ottoman style gear (including a Fez , still officially banned in Turkey).

We started earlier, about an hour before sunset. Every night at sunset a cannon was fired from the roof and people in all the cafes would start eating. I kept wondering what the loud bang was.... We would break for dinner, since all the musicians fasted too and also they could now smoke (despite the huge signs warning of fines in the centre).
Sometimes a semazen would whirl with us, quite weird in a shopping centre. Good advert for Pierre Cardin...

I love it when the little kids dance and gyrate their hips to our sufi music while the demure headscarfed mothers look on (sometimes giggling to themselves).

Every night was also marked by us fighting with the sound guys were always different and had no idea how to operate the system-( in fact this goes for nearly all my gigs in Turkey).
After our performance there was often another performance:
a Fire twirler, a magician, a hypnotist(trancing a boy to take off his clothes...),
a Zene (man dressed as belly dancer who did really well- better than some of the dancers Ive seen in Oz)

Black sea kemence (violin) and dancing

Karagoz actors (classic Anatolian storytelling)

Asuk and Mahsun duo: 2 guys dressed as male and female dwarfs dancing and kissing each other . with faces painted on their stomachs.Traditional from black sea region. Weird.

All in all my Turkish has improved , since I spent 5 hours a day with the guys. ( Ive learnt a bit of argo – slang, too).
So now its Bayram holiday and everyone is walking around in new clothes that they traditionally buy.

Other than that the water often goes off for one or two days at a time (a drought worse than oz) and recently the power went off for two days while the guys dug up the roads around here looking for the fault. They spent half their time waiting for car owners to move their cars.

I went to a Kurdish Turku bar the other night : heres a pic of some dancing. Notice the pic of

Che Guevara above the door.....

I’ll start playing back in Little Wing café this weekend. Be good to dust of the European repertoire again.

catch you soon

phil

Journey to Bulgaria

I only knew I was going to Bulgaria half an hour before I left Istanbul as I didn’t know if I could get a ticket in order to renew my Turkish tourist visa.
The bus immediately assailed us with a video of a gyrating Bulgarian pop singer with almost nothing on.
After we crossed the border I could see the ex-soviet traces immediately
Even more dilapidated buildings than in turkey
The Cyrillic writing with occasional English even though virtually noone spoke any English.
When I arrived in Plovdiv, Bularias second largest city, I was immediately rebuffed by the one piece of travel advice Id been given, That it is a member of the EU and prices are in euros
I couldn’t leave the bus station until I found some Bulgarian money
Luckily a Turkish bus operator changed a 10 euro note
I finally found my hostel after travelling on a dilapidated bus filled by men with caps, looking very worn out.







I took the last bed in the place and luckily the manager spoke some English

I was staying old Plovdiv: very historical with many beautiful

churches

200 year old houses

a Roman amphitheatre.

and a local mosque.

In fact they say the town is built on the ruins of Europes oldest known settlement 5000 years ago.

I wandered into the beer garden. Bulgarian beer is very cheap at 50 cents a glass.
Later that night I was looking for food and music in the centre of the city.
One long mall filled with umbrellas, seats, beer drinkers and pizza and doner kebab shops .My one hope was a sushi bar which turned out pretty bad sushi
As for the music , none of the famous Bulgarian accordion to be found.

Just one lone gaida (goat skin bagpipes) player in the mall. He was pretty good.

The next morning I successfully avoided some aussies in the hostel, preferring anonymity and went looking for the bus to the Bachkovo monastry in the hills.A nice challenge, with no language.
2 hours later I was dropped off and walked up the hill to the entrance.
Being a Sunday it was full of people.
I waited in a queue to get in the old church before I realised it was a queue to kiss one of the iconic paintings.

Interesting how people were pushing into the queue (and then asking for Gods blessing.

In fact people were kissing all of the 50 or so iconic panitings around the church and lighting heaps of candles.

I saw one boy who got into the spirit by kissing the walls and anything he saw.

I wandered into the hills and came across the original sleeping quarters next the cemetery. The building is 1000 years old.

I kept wandering into the hills , loving the chance for exercise in the nice leafy forest. I walked for about two hours

past goat herds

and decorated water spouts giving the local spring water.

Down the bottom of the hill I passed the many stalls selling grilled meat and found a restaurant with a picture of a fish
Indeed they were serving trout which turned out to be terrific . It went down great with the local wine. They love their white cheese and even cover their hot chips with it,
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful except for a diatribe by a local who hates Turkish people and who tried to sell me a bad kaval (flute).
I read my Bosnian book in a park , frustrated because noone was lying on the grass. I presumed that I couldn’t either.
That night I was travelling back to Turkey armed with a few bottles of Bulgarian wine.
The music played on the bus was all Greek, Im sure just to annoy the Turks on board.
The border crossing proved more difficult
At 1am we came to the first barrier. We were getting on and off the bus at various points in the cool night air, ordered by the fascist bus drivers assistant. She would point at me “go there!” or “stay!”
We had our luggage checked and finally got to the last barrier only to be turned back because the exit stamp from Bulgaria was wrongly dated the previous day. We reversed back a kilometre to correct them and finally passed through into Turkey. The border crossing had taken 2 and a half hours! We were cold and exhausted..
Just before dawn the bus stopped at a cafe so the Turks could feed themselves.
This was the first morning of the fasting month of Ramadan.